


On the Sixth Day

by Edhla



Series: After the Fall [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Sherlock Whump, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 46,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edhla/pseuds/Edhla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Besides his brother, Mycroft Holmes cares for only one man: Stephen Hassell, his personal assistant. And according to Stephen's kidnapper, he has six days to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

"You're sure that this isn't indiscreet?" Stephen Hassell smiled from where he was sitting on the bed.

"Oh yes, I'm sure it's _very_ indiscreet." Mycroft smiled back - or rather, he engaged a twisted smirk which was meant to be a smile, and was the best he could do on most occasions. Old habits died hard, and Mycroft had much more reason to smirk than smile.

"I wouldn't worry about that for now," he went on briskly, a little annoyed that Stephen had spoken to the niggle he'd held all day. "The British Government might own me for three hundred and sixty four days a year, but my Christmases have always been my own."

Mycroft's experience of English country houses amounted to one: Linwood. He had never before spent a blustery winter's night in smaller and cosier quarters, where a single log fire warmed every nook and cranny of the 17th century stone house, including a nude sleeper among crisp linen on the bed. A place where a person who snored in one bedroom could be clearly heard in another; where a simple meal cooking in the kitchen drifted a delicious aroma of orange and cloves to every room on the ground floor, and pine needles from the Christmas tree found their way into every crack and gap in the flagstones underfoot.

Yes, he reflected contentedly to himself, though he would never have voiced it aloud. Yes, Stephen had been right to insist they spend that Christmas at his own country home, rather than in the cold comfort of Linwood.

"I'm glad you came out here with me, Mycroft," Stephen said suddenly. "You're different when it's like this."

"Oh?" Mycroft raised his eyebrows. "Well, I suppose I am," he said stiffly. "But you can hardly expect me to be anything other than discreet at work, Stephen. As I said, my holidays are my own."

"No, they're not." Stephen smiled. He was thirty-nine, and the hair just above his ears was starting to speckle with grey. But with a dimple on one side of his face and none on the other, he looked like a schoolboy when he was amused.

"Indeed?"

"No." Stephen beckoned him; when he hesitated, he took him by the wrists and pulled him down. "I'm pretty sure that they're _mine_."

Stephen's tongue, too, held the tang of oranges and cloves. There were undertones of salt that were stronger on his chest and hands, and his breath was hot and sweet on Mycroft's face. Giving in, Mycroft sought him urgently; he could feel Stephen's calves brushing up against his own in a rough male kiss, so that he was no longer sure where Stephen ended and he began.

"Mycroft." Stephen's voice was low and near. "I - "

"No." Mycroft abruptly drew away, extricating himself from their tangle of arms and legs. He took several deep breaths in silence. "No. You know I… don't say such things," he explained awkwardly.

"Well, what if I say them, and you don't have to?"

"No. Even worse. Let's not ruin this one day of the year by our disagreeing over a word." Mycroft got up in a businesslike way; the moment was over, for now. He threw on a pyjama top; the evening was chill. "I'll go for more wine," he offered.

"That's kind of you."

"No, it's self-preservation. That last bottle you brought up was ungodly."

Stephen laughed as Mycroft made his way out along the passage to the main living area, padding along the floorboards in feet unaccustomed to bareness and climbing down the dusty, precarious stairs into the wine cellar. The cellar was lit only by a weak, dusty globe; already a little light-headed from the last bottle of ungodly wine, he stumbled a little on the last three steps before reaching the dim cool of the cellar itself.

_For God's sake, you are not a blushing debutante. How utterly ridiculous you are sometimes, Mycroft Holmes._

No oranges and cloves here. He could smell nothing but dank earth and secret growth in the dark. He searched quickly along the wine rack; the cellar was frigid, with little icy draughts nipping at his ankles. Selecting a bottle, he drew it out carefully and rubbed at the label with the heel of his hand.

Chtau Margaux. 1995 Vintage.

Well, he shrugged, you only lived once, and wine was meant to be drunk. Happy with his selection, he turned back to the stairs, folding the bottle in the crook of his arm and drawing it close to his body to protect it.

His last coherent memory was twofold; seeing his own foot on the dusty step below, and hearing the crash of breaking glass in the house above.

* * *

"Well, I'm calling that a success." John finished wiping clean the kitchen countertop and dropped the cleaning cloth into the bin beside the sink. 'That' was the fact that he and Molly had managed to entertain Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson, Greg, Melissa, Hayley and Harry all afternoon without undue incident. "One Christmas, done and dusted. All present or accounted for, healthy and well, and nobody's in disgrace – though I'm going to have to make it a bit clearer next year that all toys bought for a certain young lady need to be of the _silent_ kind. Seriously, Harry, _off_. It's driving me mad."

He poured a glass of white wine and went back into the living room with it, handing it to Mrs. Hudson. He'd not yet told Harry this, but he was absurdly proud that every other adult in the house had had at least one drink that afternoon, and she'd managed to stay strong. He and Molly had planned yet another "dry" Christmas; Harry had insisted on trying her willpower. Three months of therapy at the Harley Street Clinic had done her good. She looked up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a stuffed polar bear in her hands.

"John, don't be so miserable," she objected. "For God's sake, it's a polar bear that sings "I'd Like to Teach The World to Sing" in the voice of Jimmy Durante. I could play this all day."

"You _have_ played it all day," he reminded her. "Give it a rest, before the batteries mysteriously go missing."

"Good technique, that one," Lestrade remarked. He was also sitting on the floor. Mycroft may have chosen not to be at the Watson household for the festivities that year, but he hadn't forgotten to send in Charlie's first Christmas gift. This was a full wooden Victorian train set, painted in exquisite detail in bright primary colours. Lestrade had immediately set to work assembling it and wouldn't let anybody else play with it.

"Having fun with that?" John asked him. He sat back down on the sofa beside Molly, who was snuggled up in one of his jumpers and already dozing; she lay her head on his shoulder.

"I'd be having a lot more fun with this if I could get it to work," he muttered.

"Well, Dad, you're trying to attach that carriage the wrong way," Hayley objected.

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are." Sherlock was standing on the other side of the room near the window, a glass of sherry in his hands. "Turn the clip over."

"Nope, other way," John remarked as Lestrade obligingly twisted the clip over. "Left to right."

"Why is it that everything with a penis thinks he's an expert when it comes to trains?" Harry wanted to know of nobody in particular.

"Harry!"

"What?"

John shook his head woefully. "Jesus," he groaned. "We _nearly_ got through one day without that, didn't we?"

"She's got a point though, John," Melissa said. "I mean, if Greg just stopped being so stubborn and let me and Hayley help him half an hour ago when we offered, we'd have a fully functioning train set for you boys to lie on the floor and play with by now."

"Besides." Hayley, newly eighteen and proud of the privileges that came with her birthday, sipped her own glass of wine. "I just offered Dad _my_ opinion, and I'm pretty sure I don't have a -"

"Okay, stop," Lestrade broke in.

Before this could degenerate into a squabble and marr the day, Sherlock's phone rang. He absent-mindedly put his glass of sherry precariously on the windowsill and fished it out of his pocket, looking at the incoming caller ID for a second.

"Excuse me," he said, making his way to the hall doorway.

"What's up, Sherlock?" John asked.

"Mycroft," he said briefly on his way past. "Give me a moment."

"So. How has work been, Molly?" Mrs. Hudson asked as Sherlock wandered off into the hall.

"Oh, tiring." She smiled through it, but she'd looked tired most of the time since Charlie had been born. "But good. The details are boring, but I've been looking at some really interesting things with viral pneumonia, and I think we'll get the grant we applied for to be able to do some more research. We'll know in the middle of January."

"But you've got time off over Christmas, surely?"

"Ten days. And they'll all be worth it." Molly smiled at Charlie, who was just then being dandled from Hayley's knee - something Lestrade hadn't been all that excited to behold. "It'll be lovely," she went on contentedly. "We were going to go away for a week to the Lakes District, but it's been so cold, so we may as well stay here."

"Charlie won't remember it, anyway, whether you stay or go," Mrs Hudson smiled. "Oh, she does look dear in that little dress! And so big - like she's ready to get up and run about already."

"A while to go before that happens," John remarked. "Thank God. She's going to be trouble once she can get about on her own."

"Oh, wait until she's old enough to back-answer." Mrs. Hudson glanced instinctively at the doorway where Sherlock had just exited.

"You can't have one, Peanut," Lestrade suddenly told his daughter. "Not for at least five years. Your mother would kill me."

"I wouldn't worry about that, Dad. I'm waiting for you and Mel to have a baby first," Hayley shot back.

"What's the weather in hell look like at the moment?" Melissa interjected innocently. Hayley smiled.

"Quite chilly," she teased. "In fact, one might say it's nearly freezing. How old is Charlie now?"

"Five months and three days," Molly answered. She sounded proud, as if her daughter being alive all this time was one of her greatest accomplishments. "I can't believe we've – "

Molly cut herself off as Sherlock's voice, sharp and anxious, floated in from the hall.

"Mycroft… calm down. No. No, you are of absolutely no use if you're going to be incoherent. Give me the address."

John and Lestrade looked at each other. Lestrade got up from the floor, and John removed his arm from where it had been wrapped around Molly's shoulders.

"The _address_ , Mycroft. Now. No... just the address."

With an apologetic, half-anxious look at his wife, John rose and went softly out to the hall doorway, where he found Sherlock pacing around with his phone at his ear. Their eyes met for a few seconds as Sherlock listened down the line.

"Mycroft," he said again. "Are you injured? Do you need an ambulance?"

Pause.

"Yes, you've told me that. Do _you_ need an ambulance?" Without particularly waiting for an answer, he reached out to get his coat off the coat stand; Lestrade gently brushed past John to do the same. Behind John, the entire living room had fallen silent.

"Listen," Sherlock said firmly. "We're on our way. Don't panic and don't move unless you need to. Don't contaminate the crime scene any more than you have to."

"Crime scene?" John demanded as Sherlock unceremoniously hung up the phone and shoved it in his coat pocket.

"He's been attacked," Sherlock said briefly, putting his scarf on. "I don't know how badly… he's in distress and not making sense, though I've thankfully got an idea of where he is. Lestrade, I think we're looking at an abduction."

"An abduction?"

"He doesn't know where Stephen is."

"Shit. Gimme the address," Lestrade muttered. "I'll get a unit out there -"

"Not your jurisdiction," Sherlock told him. "And we need to assess what's happened before we bring a team of police officers in to make a disaster of the evidence on hand. Come with us, John. He may need a doctor."


	2. When We Want You

"Mycroft, what's your birthday…? And Sherlock's…? What about mine…?"

Sherlock, curled up in the passenger seat beside Lestrade, listened carefully to John's side of the conversation, trying to gauge the quality of his brother's responses by John's tone of voice and the space between his questions. John had acquiesced to Sherlock's insistence that they wait until their own arrival before calling in the local force or an ambulance, but then he'd kept Mycroft on the phone from the time they'd backed out of the drive until now. He'd paused only to switch to Lestrade's phone when the battery of his own bled out.

"Okay. Could you spell your name backwards, please? Take your time… Greg, how close are we?"

Lestrade, who had been taking his instructions from Sherlock, looked across at him in mute questioning.

"Five minutes," Sherlock said briefly.

"We'll be five minutes, Mycroft. Now… okay, well done… no I'm _not_ patronising you, just answer my questions, will you? You get one wrong and I'm dialling 999-"

"Stop the car!" Sherlock suddenly exclaimed, making a grab for the wheel. Lestrade, used to Sherlock's complete and utter disregard for safety when he was thinking intensely, braked violently; even seatbelted, John pitched into the back of Sherlock's seat.

"What the hell-?"

"Keep the headlights on." Sherlock threw his door open and hurried out to the frosty road; both John and Lestrade watched him looking carefully at something on the road between his feet. Without a word, he came back to the car and opened the door again, pulling out a high-end Nikon DSLR camera that had been sitting in the console near his feet and taking it back to where he'd been standing. The flash fired nine times.

"What's he doing?" John muttered, cupping the receiver end of his phone.

"Dunno."

Lestrade hadn't time to say any more before Sherlock was back again; he shut the door hard and reached for his seatbelt.

"What was that?" Lestrade asked him.

"Could be anything," was the short response. "Might be nothing. Minor skid marks from where a Toyota van briefly lost traction on the road… recently. In the last two hours or so, I imagine. I think it was a 1997 Hiachi, but I'll need to examine the marks against samples to make sure." He paused. "It was going in the opposite direction to us."

There was silence for a few moments, broken only by John picking up his string of questioning on Mycroft.

"Sherlock," Lestrade finally muttered. "You know damn well that this couldn't be more different to the usual kidnapping police procedure. You know time is important and that most kidnap victims-"

"Most who are murdered are murdered quickly," Sherlock finished for him. "Within the first few hours. I know. And you also know that most of such victims are children who are kidnapped by warring parents or by twisted perverts who aren't interested in anything other than causing pain. Very few grown men are ever kidnapped and when they are, they're usually held for ransom."

"Sherlock-"

"Did I find the Bruhl children, Lestrade?"

"… Yes."

"Did I find them promptly?"

"Six hours."

"Did I find them alive?"

"Yes."

"Then do me a favour and _trust me."_

~~oo~~oo~~oo~~oo~~

Lestrade pulled the car up to the modest thatched farmhouse, as promised, six minutes later. As the headlights bounced over the front of the property, all three in the car immediately noticed that the heavy double front door was hanging open on both sides. Amber light was spilling out onto the pavement and neatly manicured front lawn, as if this were any other Christmas night; but that open front door was as telling as an open wound, and no less alarming. But Sherlock barked for John and Lestrade to stay where they were while he took twenty-two photographs of the drive; and when they finally reached the doorway, he was just in time to grab John by the arm.

"What?" John demanded, impatiently hoisting his medical case in his free arm.

"Crime scene," Sherlock hissed. "Don't touch anything. Mind the floor." He softly stepped inside, taking his own advice. "Mycroft?" he called hesitantly into the hall.

All three of them now heard a kind of coughing noise emanating from a doorway that opened onto the right hand side of the corridor. Coughing, and the reek of blood; Lestrade touched Sherlock's arm and mutely pointed to the clots that had dribbled onto the flagstones they were standing among. Swiftly but carefully, Sherlock negotiated the evidence without walking through it, and arrived in the doorway first.

"Mycroft -"

This time it was Lestrade who grabbed John's arm to prevent him from barrelling in over the only evidence they had to go on.

Mycroft was curled up in an armchair by the window; or what had once been a window and was now little more than a gaping hole in the side of the living room, giving the place something of the impression of a bloodstained smile with a front tooth knocked out. Frigid darkness flooded in through the gap. Sugary fragments of glass littered the carpet, glistening among a broken chair, an overturned coffee table and ominous dark puddles of various sizes. They showed their true, horrible colour on the curtains, the sofa, and Mycroft's blue striped pyjamas.

"Don't move," Sherlock barked at John and Lestrade. "I need to photograph this in its original state."

"Photograph - Sherlock, what the hell?" John had so far not taken his eyes off the bloodstained man shivering in the armchair. But Mycroft was looking back at them quite impassively – perhaps too impassively.

"Do as he says," he told John hollowly. "It's important. I'm not hurt."

"Jesus, how much blood is that?" Lestrade muttered, receiving no reply as Sherlock fired the camera off, this time no less than thirty times. Mycroft waited calmly; finally Sherlock nodded and John crossed the room to where Mycroft was still sitting, one leg crossed over the other.

"You're not injured?" he demanded, taking one of his hands and drawing it toward him to take his pulse. Mycroft winced and clenched his jaw.

"No," he said. "Stephen is… I… I'm afraid I don't remember where Stephen is… I was getting wine..."

"Never mind about that now," John told him, getting down on his haunches beside him and hearing Sherlock huff with indignation at his shoulder. "Are you bleeding…? You are..."

"I'm not…" Mycroft protested, but John had drawn both his hands out over his knees and was looking them over in horror. He glanced up at Sherlock, who had cocked his head to the side to read the words carved in fine-tipped savagery along each of Mycroft's fingers.

_when_

_we_

_want_

_you_

_we_

_will_

_take_

_you_

"Call the local force, Lestrade," was all Sherlock said.

* * *

 

"You're warm enough?" John asked Mycroft as he settled him into the back of the car with a blanket over his knees. He turned the key Lestrade had given him in the ignition to crank up the car's heater. Mycroft gave him little more than a vague grunt in response; he was passive and compliant, like a child who was sleepwalking.

"What day is it, Mycroft?" John asked him, taking his pulse and again noting those horrible words carved onto his frost-nipped fingers. He made a mental note: the first thing the paramedics had to do was get the man warm. Sherlock may or may not have been right in insisting nobody else touch the crime scene before he arrived, but the fact of the matter was that Mycroft had sat freezing next to an open window for at least forty-five minutes.

"Wednesday," he responded, teeth chattering slightly. "Christmas Day. December twenty-fifth. John, tell Sherlock Stephen is missing…"

John frowned. Mycroft had passed most of his verbal tests for concussion with flying colours – knew everyone's birthday, could spell his name backwards, knew who the Prime Minister was and even who'd won the last World Cup. But since John had bundled him out to the car awaiting the arrival of the police and an ambulance, he'd asked him four times to tell Sherlock that Stephen was missing.

_Emotional shock? His pulse is way up, but that's normal under the circumstances. He smells a little boozy, but I don't think he's drunk._

"I'll tell him, Mycroft," he promised, as he had all four times. He pulled the keyless entry tab off of the key-ring in the ignition. "I'm going to lock you in, if that's okay? You can still unlock the doors from the inside if you have to, but I want you to stay here. Sherlock's working on it, and the police are on their way. Understood?"

"John, I'm not _stupid."_

"No, but you're not in a good way, are you? Stay there." He shut and locked the car door behind Mycroft and hurried back to the house, finding Sherlock and Lestrade picking over the gore-spattered mess in the living room. Now that Mycroft was out of the context of the scene, John could really see just how much blood had flooded the floor, walls, curtains…

"How is he?" Sherlock muttered distractedly. He was still clutching his camera and sifting through the mess; the glass shards clinked at his feet as he gently kicked at them.

"I think he's all right," John said. "Bruised and battered, but I don't think anything's broken… the paramedics will be able to check him over better when they come. He'll need someone to keep a close eye on him for forty-eight hours at least. Concussion can be delayed, and he's had a nasty shock as well as a head injury."

Sherlock nodded vaguely; he was still looking around the room. "Looks like both of them put up a fight," he muttered.

"But this is all Stephen's blood?"

"So it appears." Sherlock put his palms together and brought them to his lips; it had always struck John as an attitude of prayer. "John," he asked in low tones, "do you think a person could lose this much blood and still be alive?"

John looked around. "How tall is Stephen?" he asked.

"My height," Sherlock said without a pause. "Give or take an inch or so." At the far end of the room, Lestrade had wandered into the corridor to check out any possible disturbances in the other rooms.

"And he's heavier set than you?"

"By about six kilograms."

"Been drinking?"

"Yes. At least three standard drinks and probably no more than five, if Mycroft's state is anything to go by."

John looked at the raw globs congealing on the flagstones and the spatters and smears all over the sofa and curtains. It had been a long time since he'd been called on to make a visual estimate of blood loss.

"John?" Sherlock urged him.

"Yeah, I'm _thinking!"_ John snapped. Then he covered his mouth for a second and took a deep breath. "Sorry," he said. "Um. Look, no arterial sprays that I can see. That's… a good sign. And blood always looks like there's more of it than there is… I don't know, Sherlock. Looks like almost two pints to me. If he's alive, he's probably going to go into shock pretty quickly."

"Sherlock," Lestrade called across from where he was standing in the hall doorway, making an effort not to touch the door frame. "I think you'd better come here and have a look at this..."

His tones were so urgent that Sherlock immediately crossed the floor to him. "What is it?" he demanded.

Lestrade gestured into the bedroom; Sherlock's gaze immediately darted in on what the significant evidence was. It was lying in a soft, unobtrusive heap at the foot of the bed.

"You need to go out and have a bit of a chat with your brother," Lestrade muttered. "Or get John to, if he'd be more likely to talk with him. 'Cause if those are Stephen's clothes, I want to know what the hell he was wearing when he was taken..."

They looked at each other for a second or two. Outside, fine flakes of snow were drifting onto the bare, bleak graves of last summer's flowers.


	3. First Call

Mycroft was dreaming of drooping catkins and purring turtle doves. Of smoky summer afternoons, of warm scented grass and tart strawberries and the gentle, lapping sound of the River Cherwell as it passed by the delights of Parson's Pleasure.

He was dreaming of Oliver Vincent.

Baron Compton, Seventh Viscount of Willerton; brilliant and beautiful, lying on a tartan blanket draped over the crisp, pale grass. They had been like two Adams that afternoon in 1986; redolent and splendid there by the river, confident that with youth and capital and prospects that they held dominion over all in the sky and on the earth and under the sea. Only the turtle doves and the roaming, scented breeze bore witness to the wine and the wisdom that passed between them.

Oliver had been swimming but had quickly swum back to the bank and climbed out, complaining that the water had been more chill than he'd expected. Instead he had stretched himself out, still naked, on the blanket to warm up and dry off. He spoke that afternoon more than Mycroft did; he spoke of poetry and music and wine, and of the glorious possibility of the communion of mankind with nature, and of the ways that man could become a god.

"It's all about beauty," he explained confidently. He shaded his eyes with his hand, gazing over to where Mycroft was stretched out, resting on his elbows. "Mycroft, what do you feel when you see a cathedral ceiling, or a sunset, or one of those gorgeous red-headed things Campbell paints with her knickers off?"

Mycroft had shrugged and awaited the answer.

"You should feel slapped about the face in the presence of an apotheosis, you dolt." Vincent had cheerfully thrown a strawberry at him. "Moses on sacred ground with his shoes off, and all that. The beautiful is _divine_. Therefore, the ugly is profane. And so for a man to achieve divinity, he must surround himself with the divine. The beautiful. He must flee from ugliness, the way that men should flee from evil. They're one and the same."

"Does he not have the responsibility," Mycroft had asked, "to cure the ugly and _make_ it beautiful?"

Oliver put a strawberry in his mouth."Good luck with that," he said. "Some things are beyond salvation. Let other men bother themselves with them. I never will."

In the moment of breathless silence that followed, Mycroft had reached out and gently laid his palm on the chill, smooth curve of Oliver's back.

The spell broke.

"What are you doing...? _"_ Oliver's blue eyes had sharpened precipitously; every muscle in his body suddenly tensed.

Mycroft withdrew his hand, white-lipped with shame and confusion. "Oliver…" he stammered. "I…"

" _Jesus,_ Myc!" Oliver's white skin gleamed in the overhead sun dapples as he leapt up and struggled into his trousers.

From that day, Mycroft Holmes - brilliant, wealthy Mycroft Holmes - had been covered with shame and trailed by rumour. _Make sure you don't let Myc Holmes in the regatta dressing room while you've got your trousers off. He's an arse bandit. Filthy bugger. Tried it on with Vincent down at the Parson's Pleasure._

Mycroft never went down to the river again.

And not being able to claim himself interested in women, he carefully smothered to death all rogue romantic urges. By the time he had graduated with honours, he had almost forgotten that he ever had any; all that remained was the raw animal drive for sex, and that had easily been satisfied with purchased encounters that became more safe and pleasurable as his social status increased over the coming years.

And then he had employed a man named Stephen Hassell.

His mind had roamed on to sunwashed linen and strong port when he was roused by a short, gentle shake.

"Mycroft…"

He opened his eyes, trying to focus on the man in front of him: John. In dawning consciousness, Mycroft found himself lying in the back seat of car; it was dark. The air inside the car was dry and hot, like the winds of a desert, but John was standing by the open door and the blast of frozen night air from behind him was like a slap to the face.

"What?" he slurred, shutting his eyes again.

"Ambulance is here, Mycroft. Come on. You need to wake up..."

* * *

As soon as he laid eyes on him, Lestrade could tell that the Dartford inspector was a personality type he knew well. Master of his own little universe, and determined to make everyone know it. Something indefinable but identifiable about the swagger as he crossed the front walk outside, or the way he glanced over his shoulder at the sergeant accompanying him. He was the entire cavalry, and he had arrived - stocky, bearded, face chafed red with the raw breeze. But before he could make an arse of himself throwing his weight around "his" crime scene, Lestrade stepped into the breach.

"Evening. I'm Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade of the Metropolitan Police," he said calmly, pulling his warrant card out of his pocket. "Second-in-command of the Homicide and Serious Crime Command Unit for the London Boroughs of Southwark and Hackney. And _you_ are?"

"DI Philip Coventry," was the humbled, slightly disgruntled response. "Dartford CID."

Lestrade, despite the circumstances, bit down on the urge to smile. In his experience, there never was a greater dick-measuring competition among police officers than when different CIDs were brought together, everyone anxious to work out who was top dog and who was merely a carpet shark.

Coventry had now turned to Sherlock questioningly. "This is…?"

"Sherlock Holmes," Lestrade said before Sherlock could open his mouth. "He's a consulting detective with the Met. He's also the brother of the assault victim, and his colleague, John Watson, is out there with the ambulance." He glanced at the blown-out window; the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles on the front drive made the shards on the floor sparkle like the lights on the nearby Christmas tree.

"Sherlock Holmes?" Coventry looked at him with a glimmer of ungrudging interest. "Oh yes, I've heard of you. Solved that case in Somerset; the dead bloke with the code in his pocket."

Sherlock nodded in silence.

"Well, I hope you're as good as they say you are – especially since it looks like it's cut a little close to home this time. And so our victims are lovers, then." Coventry went straight to the point. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"Inspector Coventry, if you're going to claim this as a hate crime, I'm going to be very, very disappointed in you," he said witheringly.

Lestrade stiffened. Not a great way to begin the investigation, but that was usually how Sherlock interacted with officers he wasn't familiar with. He seemed to find it easier to assume they _were_ going to detest him, and to respond in kind, than make any attempt at being likeable. Coventry was obviously one of the more patient officers they'd come across in the process of an investigation; he merely frowned without bristling in defence.

"You think not, Mr. Holmes?" was all he asked.

"Of _course_ not. If it were a hate crime, my brother would _also_ be missing – or he'd be dead. He has the words "when we want you, we will take you" carved on his fingers. Bit odd for a hate crime, don't you think? I would have thought an obscene gay slur would have been more appropriate."

"Then what-"

"Stephen Hassell is just a hostage," Sherlock said calmly. "This has nothing at all to do with him as a person, and is directed entirely at Mycroft. It reeks of a personal vendetta. _When we want YOU, we will take YOU._ Mycroft does tend to make enemies far more easily than he makes friends. In this case, however he came to antagonise them, it was three men of working class background."

"How could you know that? Has your brother made a statement?"

Lestrade shook his head. "Not ready for it yet," he said before Sherlock could get a word in. He folded his arms, partly as a professional gesture and partly because the room, with its gaping window, was freezing. "Concussion. Preliminary comments suggest that he doesn't remember the attack at all."

"They never do, do they?" Coventry sighed deeply.

"No, not usually," Lestrade agreed, with a slight bite in his tone. "But then, we can hardly blame Mycroft for that. That's concussion and shock for you."

"Could we possibly concentrate on the issue at hand for one moment?" Sherlock demanded, shuffling through the broken glass and going over to where the window had been broken in. He glanced out briefly, as if he were checking for something; outside it was still snowing in light little flakes, like something portrayed on one of the Christmas cards displayed on the mantelpiece.

"Okay, Sherlock," Lestrade said quietly.

"Thank you." Sherlock took a deep breath and turned back on one heel to face them. "That Stephen was abducted by three men of humble origins is perfectly obvious from the evidence collected so far," he said. "These were men. Statistical certainty. They were amateurs, and they got lucky. There were three – four would be too many to comfortably transport Stephen away from the crime scene, and two is too few to take on two grown men. I'm unfamiliar with Stephen's current state of fitness or any prior training he may have had in self defence, but Mycroft can generally take care of himself, when he's not caught in a vulnerable position. They left in an older-model Toyota van; it lost traction on the road two miles west of here on the Abingdon Road, and luckily for you I've photographed that evidence. Old car? They can't afford a newer one."

"How do you know it was a Toyota-"

"Each car make has unique measurements between the four wheels," Sherlock informed him smoothly. "That, and some telling tyre marks, narrowed it down to a Toyota van, probably mid-nineties, no later than 1998. That they smashed the window over here speaks also to how disappointingly amateur this whole event was. Professionals would have picked the lock, or knocked the door in, or used a glasscutter. A _really_ clever abductor would have connived to be let in voluntarily. Smashing the glass is the action of someone who has probably never broken into anywhere in their life before. Mycroft was caught unawares on the cellar steps and Stephen, it seems, was either naked or dressed only in his underwear."

Coventry shook his head, like a hunting dog with a duck in its mouth. "Underwear?"

"The, uh, the man's clothes are on the bedroom floor," Lestrade muttered, pointing. Coventry took a few steps toward the hall; two of his constables, who had been milling around the door, made moves to do likewise when Sherlock cut them off.

"For God's sake, Coventry," he growled. "Get these morons on your team to stop trampling the _evidence_."

Coventry glanced across at Lestrade, who looked back at him and shrugged almost imperceptibly. He sighed. "Perkins," he said. "Keep everyone out of here for a few minutes. Get them to concentrate on the front walk and the gravel."

* * *

Mycroft was draped in a blanket on the back ledge of the ambulance, nursing a cup of hot tea in one hand and his phone in the other. He was passively allowing a young woman in a high visibility jacket to put a thermometer in his ear.

"Everything okay?" John asked him, approaching almost furtively. His boots barely made a sound on the white gravel beneath them.

"Getting there," the woman beside him answered, smiling wryly. "Not a good night to be wandering around in pyjamas, though." She looked at the temperature readout. "Bit low, but a few hot cups of tea and a warm bed will help. Mycroft, when's your birthday?"

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "Oh, God, not this again," he said in exasperation. "February 2nd, 1968. If you ask me that one more time tonight, I'm going to arrange to have you fired immediately."

The woman looked at John in disbelief, as if she were about to question Mycroft's sanity.

"No, he's not delirious," John told her amiably. "He really _could_ get you fired immediately. I wouldn't push it. Just give us a minute, will you?"

She looked at Mycroft distrustfully for a few seconds, then stepped off the back of the ambulance. The vehicle wobbled slightly as she went around to the cabin. John had barely waited for her to leave before he spoke.

"Sherlock's on this, Mycroft."

"I know." Mycroft drew the blanket closer around his shoulders.

"So he'll find Stephen pretty quickly."

"So I hope."

Mycroft watched in bleary-eyed confusion as the officers from Dartford set up floodlights so that they could examine the front drive for any evidence that Sherlock had missed – which, he reflected, was almost certainly going to be nothing. Not so much as a single hair.  A stabbing pain suddenly impaled his forehead, and he flinched and put his hand up to it.

"That hurts?" John frowned.

"I was beaten unconscious," Mycroft snapped back, despite the fact that raising his voice caused another throb of pain. "Of _course_ it bloody hurts."

"Okay. I deserved that…"

Mycroft, hearing a sudden clear, bell-like melody from the direction of his lap, looked down. He had been clutching his mobile in one hand since before they had arrived and refused to put it down; now he looked at the display for a few seconds.

"Who is it?" John asked him.

"Number withheld." Mycroft took a deep breath. He suddenly felt sick, but there was no other option; he pressed the in-call button and lifted it to his ear. "Mycroft Holmes speaking."

For the first four seconds of the call, there was nothing but breathing.

"Mycroft…"

Mycroft swallowed down hard. "I'm listening," he said, briefly and clearly. He looked up at John for a moment.

"Your boyfriend is reading out our note," Stephen said. He drew an audible, pained breath. "He's an obedient little bitch, all right. Good at taking orders. On Old Year's Night, we're going…" he choked. "We're going to slit his throat. With a million pounds in cash… we can avoid all that…"

"I can't possibly get a million pounds in cash that quickly," Mycroft objected calmly. "Whether you slit his throat or not, it won't avail you of the money. It's impossible."

"Wait…" Stephen rasped, still breathing heavily down the line. "He's writing another note…"

Mycroft waited in silence for a few more seconds, listening to Stephen's sniffling.

"Bring ten thousand to the blasted oak in Churchdowne Wood at midnight tomorrow night," he said at last. "Un-Unmarked notes. Manila envelope. Come alone. N-no weapons. No cameras. No police. Or we'll…" Stephen's voice caught again, and he gave a strangled sob. "Or we'll mess him up. Might start by cutting off his ears..."

"Then you may well kill him in doing so," was Mycroft's response. "After your charming efforts in the living room. A man only has so much blood in his body. And I regret to inform you that I have no mind to ransom a dead man."

"Bring the money. Midnight tomorrow…" Stephen choked again.

"I'm going to find you, Stephen," Mycroft told him, clutching the phone so hard it stung his fingertips. "I'm going to find you, and I'm-"

As he had anticipated, the response was a sharp click, and then silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Parson's Pleasure" was an area on the banks of the River Cherwell at Oxford University, set aside for men's nude bathing up until it was closed in 1990. Nude bathing/sunbathing wasn't necessarily associated with homosexuality – hence Oliver's shocked reaction to Mycroft's gesture, despite the fact that he was naked.
> 
> Lestrade's official position is a little fudged here, since canon seems to do the same - for example, there hasn't yet been any mention of Lestrade's DCI.


	4. Inferences

"Well, that phone call certainly revealed a great deal, however unintentionally."

Sherlock and Lestrade, on John's summons, had both come out to the ambulance and heard Mycroft's word-for-word recounting of the kidnapper's call by proxy. As if the contents of the call itself hadn't been enough to indicate that things were bad, John knew it by the fact that no sooner had the explanation left Mycroft's mouth than his brother offered him a cigarette. Despite knowing that both Holmes brothers were on a lifelong quest to give up smoking for good, he didn't comment. Neither did the paramedics, though they did make Mycroft get up from the back of the ambulance and wander toward Lestrade's car before he lit up. John watched him do so carefully. Wasn't walking in a straight line yet, though he probably wasn't about to pass out again. His fingers shook as he held the cigarette between two fingers and Sherlock lit it for him.

"What did it reveal?" John asked.

"That the kidnapper has a recognisable voice, one he's anxious to conceal from me," Mycroft offered tiredly, rubbing his temple with two fingers.

"More than that." Sherlock, intercepting John's glance, promptly wiped the smug smile off his face. After all, getting one over Mycroft was only enjoyable when Mycroft's intellect wasn't compromised by a head injury. "Recognisable accent, I should imagine. You're absolutely sure that he said Old Year's Night?"

"Yes," Mycroft told him. "Odd turn of phrase, not one I'd be likely to mistake for any other."

"Wait, what's that mean?" John wanted to know, realising that there was an understanding between the Holmes brothers that he was once again not privy to.

"It's another expression for New Year's Eve, isn't it?" Lestrade asked. "I once had a girlfriend from out Dereham or somewhere, and she called it that."

As if rewarding him, Sherlock passed his cigarette over. Lestrade took two puffs and handed it back. John _did_ roll his eyes at this. Greg wasn't traumatised enough to get a free pass on breaking his smoking fast.

"Yes," Sherlock finally said. "Also used in places like the Caribbean… but on the balance of probability, I'd place money on Norfolk rather than Jamaica. You, Mycroft?"

"Yes." Mycroft took a shaky drag of his cigarette. "There was something else in that call that I couldn't convey by providing you with a transcript, though," he said unexpectedly.

"And what's that?"

"Stephen was audibly shaken by his experience, but he was _not_ shivering… or at least, he wasn't shivering severely enough for it to be evident in his voice."

Sherlock smiled slightly. "Which reinforces my belief that they have no immediate intentions of harming Stephen beyond the measures they took to subdue and abduct him. Nobody provides a warm place for their hostage if they intend to kill them anyhow." He paused. "They also apparently referred to Stephen as a _bitch_. Prison parlance?"

"You hear that kind of thing on telly all the time, so not necessarily," John protested. "I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean the kidnapper's _been_ in prison, if that's what you're getting at."

"No, it doesn't necessarily _mean_ it," Sherlock conceded scathingly. "But it's suggestive, as is the fact that they are so intimately acquainted with a particular tree in Churchdowne Wood, and immediately dropped their ransom price from a million in six days to ten thousand in one."

"What's that mean?"

"They're amateurs who are familiar with the local area, but have no idea how to demand a ransom. And they're not interested in the money," Sherlock said. "They just want to run rings around Mycroft, whom they hold a grudge against. For some reason."

"Most kidnappers aren't interested in the money," Lestrade commented, kicking at the gravel at his feet. "Not in my experience, anyway. They make ransom demands and even if the friends and family comply…"

Sherlock shot him a look which screamed _shut up._

"Anyway." Lestrade cleared his throat. "They've made a demand and we need to at least try to keep our end of the bargain. Mycroft, you're sure they didn't specify that _you_ had to be the one to make the drop-off?"

Mycroft frowned. "I'm certain," he finally said. "Though it was certainly implied."

"Yeah, well, if they specified no coppers, wires, cameras or any other tricks, but didn't say you had to be there yourself, we'll take that," Lestrade said. "By that, I mean there's no way in hell you're making that drop-off yourself."

"What-?"

"And neither are you, Sherlock, so don't even bother volunteering. _When we want you, we will take you._ We took your partner. We'll take _you_ if we feel like it. And having hit you where it hurts in taking Stephen, we may well take Sherlock, too. Not happening."

"I-"

"I said _no,_ Sherlock." Lestrade's voice was almost a growl. "I've also just been talking to Coventry – there's absolutely nothing more we can do here tonight. I'm not a doctor, but I bet the best thing Mycroft could be doing right now would be sleeping in bed."

John nodded; he waited until Sherlock and Mycroft had gone back to the house to collect whatever items the latter needed on him before he spoke up.

"Okay, what's this about?" he asked quietly.

Lestrade looked at him stonily for a few seconds. "I'm just doing my job," he returned. But John shook his head.

"Nope. Pretty sure your job doesn't strictly involve you _having_ to offer yourself as a ransom mule."

Lestrade fumbled at his pocket and pulled out a fresh cigarette of his own. This time John watched him light it without rolling his eyes or huffing at him. He waited in silence for a few minutes for him to take a few drags.

"Six months before I met Sherlock, there was a kidnapping case… fifteen year old girl called Jennie Earl," he finally said, muttering the words into his chest. "Started to walk half a mile home from school… never got there. Nobody saw it. The kidnapper demanded a ransom and told the family to drop it off in Slough Cemetery. We evacuated the area, and I took the money and waited for the kidnapper to show up."

"And… they didn't?"

"No, they did," Lestrade responded, in tones that implied the fact that they'd showed up had been the problem. "On time, too, which hardly ever happens. Just the one kidnapper, which hardly ever happens either. Balaclava, gun, you know, the works. Looking back, I was lucky I got off alive. They brought an unmarked vehicle through the gates and I could see Jennie strapped into the front seat of the car. She looked a bit… odd… but I didn't know why at the time." He cleared his throat. "Anyway. So I gave him the ransom and he peeled off, but a unit chased him down before he got to Uxbridge. Ran the car off the road. Caught the kidnapper. A guy called Geoffrey Maxham. He's still doing time. He'll die in prison."

He paused.

"And Jennie?" John pressed quietly.

"Jennie was dead – she'd been stabbed to death and sexually assaulted. She'd been dead at the cemetery. The sick bastard had propped her up in the passenger seat, put the seatbelt around her, and taped her eyelids open."

John's jaw dropped. "Shit."

"Yep."

"You - you think they're going to kill Stephen."

"They might. Even if they don't really mean to – a lot of hostages are killed by accident by kidnappers who don't know what they're doing. And Sherlock reckons they're amateurs. I agree with him." He paused. "And if they leave his corpse under that tree, I want to be the guy who finds it, not Mycroft."

John was silent for a few seconds. "I'll come with you," he said finally.

"No, you won't." Lestrade dragged on his cigarette.

"You know I'd be good backup," John protested. "I'm a decent shot, and –"

"And you've got a family."

"So do you."

"Yeah, but if I get killed tomorrow, _my_ kids will remember me." Lestrade threw his cigarette onto the gravel and crushed it under his heel; then he seemed to remember that dropping a cigarette with his DNA on it wasn't a good idea even for the peripheral areas of a crime scene, and picked it up again. Not knowing exactly what to do with it, he tucked it into his wallet. "Anyway. Not discussing it anymore, John."

John could tell by Lestrade's tones that the conversation was over for the time being. Sherlock and Mycroft had just emerged from the house; Sherlock was carrying an overnight bag over his shoulder and led the way over to the car.

"Take us back to Baker Street," he said shortly, throwing the bag into the boot, slamming it shut and opening the passenger side door. "Mycroft's staying with me for a bit."

John frowned. "Are you sure you -"

"I said, my brother is staying with _me_."

* * *

It was nearly one a.m. by the time Lestrade dropped John off at the house and he quietly let himself in. Molly was sitting by the fire, her laptop resting on her knees and Casper sitting on the arm of her chair. As soon as he entered, she gently closed the laptop and slid it under her chair, standing up. "Are you all right?" she asked softly.

"Hmm, what?" He looked up at her a little distractedly, taking off his gloves and putting them on the side table as he came into the room. A sure sign to her that he was agitated – John hated it when people put things on that table, despite her constant entreaties that tables were generally supposed to be surfaces that you put things on. "Oh – yeah. Fine," he finally said. "I'm fine. Nothing happened to me."

"What's happening?"

"Stephen's been abducted." Toby had wrapped himself around John's legs, and he picked him up, tweaking idly at the sprig of tinsel that Hayley had insisted on tucking into his collar that afternoon. "Sherlock thinks he's still in Kent somewhere, and he's put in word to have the kidnapping announced on telly - the early morning bulletin. Thinks the kidnapper might be a former inmate, but that's a long story."

"And is Mycroft okay?"

"Physically? He'll be okay. Bit of a nasty shock, and he got a fair whack on the back of the head, but the paramedics thought he was all right to be released. He's staying with Sherlock for the moment." John cleared his throat, wondering if he should mention the ransom adventure planned for the next night.

That could wait. No need to heap it on her in one go.

"Shame about poor Charlie's first Christmas," he finally said ruefully.

"We got through most of the day with lots of fun," Molly pointed out. "Anyway, she won't remember it."

" _You_ will."

She shrugged. "Yes, well, I'm just sorry it turned out so horrible for Mycroft and Stephen," she said. "I can't complain because you had to go out and help them – it wasn't anyone's fault except…" she stopped, as if realising that she was on the verge of saying something tactless. Taking a deep breath, she reached over and squeezed John's hand. Her engagement ring was slightly askew, and he felt the diamond setting graze up against his fingers for a second.

"I'll make it up to you."

She smiled and kissed him. "No, you won't," she said. "There's nothing to make up. And Charlie should be proud that she has a father who helps people like that even when it's… well, even when it's not very convenient."

Reluctantly, he returned her smile. "I dunno," he said. "If I were Charlie I'd be more impressed by the fact that my mother is a _saint."_

"It's really okay, John. It was good… great… until the call came in. And… you were safe this year."

John had no recollection of the Christmas before – he'd been in a coma, and it had been about the exact same time a year before that Molly had been told, again, that her husband of only ten weeks was likely to die. John had no argument against this, and simply gave a vague shrug.

"How is Charlie, anyway?" he asked in different tones.

"Fast asleep." Molly sounded pleased. Charlie had recently started to sleep for much longer periods than before; the extra sleep meant that both her parents had more energy for themselves. "Went down without a fuss- I think she was tired out from her big day. Are you hungry?"

John shook his head.

"Then come to bed," she said softly, reaching out for his hand. "There's nothing you can do right now, is there? You'll be a better help to Mycroft if you're rested."


	5. St. Stephen's Day

Mycroft had been very quiet in the back seat for the entire trip back to London; once John had been dropped off he said not a word before they pulled up at Baker Street. His pyjamas had been confiscated at the crime scene for any evidence that could be derived from the pattern of bloodstains on them; not having the time or the inclination to dress into a three-piece suit, Mycroft had distractedly put on the first shirt and jacket that Sherlock had handed him. Perhaps, Sherlock reflected as they got out of the car, perhaps he would have been better to have insisted on the suit. The jacket was thin, and Mycroft was shivering violently. This wasn't lost on Mrs Hudson who, late though it was, met them in the front hall as they came in.

"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry to hear what's happened," she immediately said, frowning. She drew her dressing gown around herself, but she didn't look as embarrassed as she might otherwise have done to have her tenant's intimidating brother see her in her nightie and slippers. "Perhaps a nice cup of tea would make you feel a little bit better? I've put the fire on upstairs and put a hot water bottle in John's old bed for you, dear, that should warm you up a bit."

"The sofa is perfectly acceptable," Mycroft said shortly, but Sherlock gave him a gentle nudge in the direction of the stairs.

"Go to bed, Mrs. Hudson," he said, steering Mycroft ahead of him step by step. "And don't be so absurd, Mycroft. There is no logic behind your sleeping on the sofa when there's a perfectly good bed upstairs."

Sherlock took him up to what had once been John's old bedroom; a much smaller room than his own, and it had always appeared even smaller due to the sloping roof and dark curtains. Still, this bedroom was warmer than Sherlock's; although Sherlock's room got residual heat from the kitchen, the one upstairs had its own fireplace on the same flue as the one in the living room. Mrs. Hudson had lit fires in both, and a certain lumpy appearance of the duvet indicated she'd been true to her word about the hot water bottle.

"Thank you," Mycroft said briefly, looking around. "Quite sufficient."

Sherlock left his brother to undress into pyjamas; Mycroft threw them on as quickly as possible and was just considering coming downstairs after the offered tea when there was a creak on the stairs and the door clicked open. He looked up, expecting to see Mrs. Hudson with a tea tray. Instead he saw Sherlock bearing not a teacup, but a mug, and even worse – ugh! – it was obvious that the tea had been made with a _tea bag._ Too exhausted and numb to even look withering about it, let alone say something, Mycroft took the hot mug between his palms and sipped patiently at the strong, sweet brew.

"Dartford Constabulary will be working throughout the night," Sherlock finally remarked.

"Yes, I imagine so."

"And judging from the illegal u-turn he made after we got out of the car, I'm confident that Lestrade is returning to his office, not his home."

"Yes. I'll be sure to commend him to his superiors for his diligence."

Sherlock coughed slightly into his hand. "Despite what John thinks, exploring the prison system might yield some further clues," he said. "I'm going to address that immediately, though you understand I'll only be able to launch a full investigation after nine this morning."

"Indeed."

There was silence, broken only by the windows rattling against the freezing wind outside.

"I _will_ find him for you, Mycroft," Sherlock said in a low voice. "I will find him, and I will bring him back to you."

* * *

 

In the pale, pre-dawn light of early morning the next day - _St. Stephen's Day_ \- Mycroft stumbled down the staircase and onto the first-floor landing. He still felt far too cold, despite the warm bed he'd just risen out of; he fought viciously to put all speculations on Stephen's physical state in this weather out of his mind.

_That won't help._

Or as both brothers might have expressed it aloud: worrying about Stephen freezing to death was not likely to help them find him any faster.

Going into the living room, which reeked of stale cigarette smoke, he found Sherlock sitting at the living room table. Glancing over at the clock, Mycroft saw that it was now half-past seven; Sherlock had yet to go to bed. Before him was a pile of photographs and papers. His laptop was open to one side, and his phone lay on the other; without permission, Mycroft picked it up and read the most recent text, one that had come in from Lestrade at 3:17am.

_Secured ransom & referred case. Mel's onto the prison databases - parolees w/ history. Dawson aware. Still talking John out of coming along. _

"I'm not convinced that John needs to involve himself in this case," Mycroft remarked, annoyed at finding himself somewhat croaky.

"If you ask his opinion, John needs to involve himself in _every_ case," Sherlock said absently, looking over the prints he'd made of photographs taken the night before.

"As a matter of fact," Mycroft continued, folding his arms, "I don't think that Detective Inspector Lestrade should involve himself. If it becomes known that he's a police officer…"

"He's confident that he can pass as a civilian in that part of the world."

"I doubt that."

"We'll see." Sherlock pointed vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. "Coffee is on the counter."

Mycroft turned to look at it. "You made coffee," he remarked blankly.

"Yes. I do know how."

"That wasn't my point." Mycroft shuffled over to the kitchen counter and picked up the cup Sherlock had evidently made for him. Horribly bitter – Mycroft liked his black coffee with four sugars – but it was as hot and comforting as the tea he'd had the night before. He sipped in silence, listening to the clicks and shuffles as Sherlock worked on at the table.

"You've not had any other calls?" Sherlock finally asked.

"Oh, how could I forget?" Mycroft rolled his eyes. "Yes, Sherlock, I've had six calls from the kidnappers with further instructions I haven't bothered to let you know about."

"No need for sarcasm," he said absently, still concentrating on his computer. "You do have a concussion, after all, so I can't vouch for your mental acumen just now. Aspirin is over there." He waved his hand again without getting up. "John recommends you take it."

Mycroft went back over to the kitchen bench, finding the tablets beside the microwave and obligingly worrying down two of them.

"I'm almost one hundred percent certain of it now," Sherlock went on. "1997 Toyota Hiachi."

"Is that a useful lead, then?" Mycroft wanted to know, slightly bitchily. He idly rubbed the back of his aching head.

"It is when it's coupled with quite another interesting revelation," Sherlock said. "Melissa rang half an hour ago. There's a prisoner in Wandsworth who wants a bit of a chat with you this morning. Apparently, he's identified a man whom he believes to be the kidnapper."

Mycroft raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Our helpful informant is one Eric Dolan." Sherlock turned the laptop so that Mycroft could see the article he was looking at, with the accompanying photograph. Eric Dolan was balding and chubby-cheeked, with disarming dimples and mild brown eyes. "Doing four years for tax evasion, of all things in the world. Have you heard of him?"

"Yes." Mycroft sipped his coffee. "Though more for his complicity in vice, acceptance of stolen goods, bootlegging and drug trafficking than for his tax offences."

"Remarkable how the justice system hasn't been able to pin those crimes on him. One would almost think they were deliberately turning a blind eye." Sherlock's mouth twisted slightly. He looked up. "Anyhow, the early bulletin into the kidnapping went through. Dolan saw it, as we'd intended, and volunteered that he had a cell mate last year who seemed rather unimpressed with you, brother. Paul Doherty. Forty-nine." This time he handed over a printout from a website. "Just finished eleven years for arms trafficking. The taskforce are searching for him now. I will bet a considerable amount that he, or someone he knows, happens to own the car we're looking for, though it may take a while for me to access records as such. But oh, do guess where he's originally from."

"Norfolk. Norwich, as a matter of fact," Mycroft said immediately, sitting down at the kitchen table and reflecting on this for a few seconds. "Paul Doherty. I… was involved in a counter-trafficking operation twelve years ago. I testified at his trial."

* * *

 

"I knew the second I seen the news report, Mr. Holmes."

The justice system may or may not have turned a blind eye to the many and varied crimes of Eric Dolan, but they were certainly complicit in the man's determination to smoke himself into an early grave inside of prison walls. Dolan flicked the ash into a nearby ashtray and shoved the half-smoked cigarette into his mouth again, leaning back in his chair. Mycroft sat opposite him, hands neatly folded into his lap; Sherlock was standing, alert and silent, near the door.

"Oh, indeed?" was all Mycroft trusted himself to say. He was trying, Sherlock saw, to cover up the plasters on his fingers.

"Doherty's… well, let's just say I know him. Pretty well, in fact." He ashed his cigarette again.

"You're friends?"

"Fuck, no. He's a backstabbing prick." Dolan put his feet on the table, as if defying Mycroft to express disgust or tell him not to; Mycroft made no reaction to this obvious ploy for dominance, though behind him he could tell that Sherlock had just made a "face."

"But he thought you were his friend?" he heard Sherlock say from over his shoulder.

"He was one of my boys." Dolan tapped idly on the table with his fingers. "We _were_ good... friends... for a bit there." He smirked. "He told me things. Like how he was going to fix you well and proper when he got out of here. I think at first he was planning on messing up your brother. Don't know why he changed his mind on that one." He shrugged. "But the last I saw of him, he still reckoned he was going after you when he got out."

"And how long ago was that?"

"How long ago did he get out?" Dolan took a drag on his cigarette, considering. "Jeez, time goes weird in here, but I think it was last month. Full sentence. Serves him right."

"I see." Mycroft nodded, closing one hand over the other again. "And now I must come to the most important question, Mr. Dolan. Just why are you telling me this?"

Dolan smiled again, revealing his dimples and the decidedly less attractive gap between his nicotine-stained front teeth. "Like I said, he's one of mine. He knows me. Told me things."

Mycroft fixed the prisoner with one of his patented bird-of-prey stares; Dolan shuffled slightly under his gaze, seemingly intimidated for the first time.

"I've got cancer, Mr. Holmes," he finally said. "Six months to live. You can check me records if you don't believe me. I've got five weeks left on me full sentence. Knocked back on parole twice."

"I think I see where this is going."

"I got kids, Mr. Holmes. I miss 'em, and their mum. Emily and Daniel. They're nice kids. I want to see them a bit before I get too sick for it. Get me out of here, and I'll bring you your man. 'Cause at the moment there are two things I want: me out of here, and that bastard back in."

Mycroft chuckled bitterly. "And what," he said, "makes you think you're any more trustworthy than _Doherty_ is? You're as likely to disappear entirely as bring me my man."

The two men looked at each other impassively for a few seconds; finally Dolan shrugged. "You're as cold as they say, Mr. Holmes, if you're happy to throw your friend to the dogs for the sake of five weeks," he said. "But I just made an offer; you don't have to take it. Have it your way."

"Thank you." Mycroft said icily, getting up. "I can assure you, I always do."

* * *

 

"So it's not even an oak, then?" John peered across the dark fields at the clump of trees on the horizon.

"Apparently not." Lestrade shoved his hands into his pockets; the night wind was freezing, and the pale winter grass was frosted over. "Elm. But everyone calls it the Blasted Oak. Something killed it years ago. Insects or something. I don't know. I'm not a tree expert."

He folded the bulky manila envelope and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket. It was the only thing on him; he'd just given his phone and wallet to John, who was standing beside the car with him. The police had evacuated all the farmhouses along Fawkham Road, which bordered the wood on one side; the only residence that was occupied was a sprawling white farmhouse a quarter of a mile further on, where the Scotland Yard Serious Crimes Unit had set up a taskforce to monitor the drop-off from afar. There also, Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes were waiting.

There had been no call from the kidnappers, or from Stephen, that day, and tension was high between the Holmes brothers. Lestrade considered it a win that he'd managed to convince both of them to stay away from the Wood itself, though he hadn't totally succeeded in keeping John away. He'd insisted on waiting by the car as armed backup if needed.

"You don't come up unless I say, John," he reminded him.

"Okay."

"I'm serious."

"Okay."

Lestrade was well acquainted with John's dismissive 'okay.' He didn't trust it, but there was nothing he could really do about it. "And for God's sake," he said, "don't fire unless you have to."

This time John gave him a withering look. "Greg," he said. "I will come up there if I think you need it, and I'll fire if I think I have to, and you're going to be late 'cause it's ten to midnight already, so stop talking and get a move on. Just… don't get killed."

"Will do." Lestrade looked wry. "I mean, _won't_ do."

John watched him hurry up the path, torch in one hand, the other shoved in his jacket pocket. He hoped Greg had enough sense to take it back out again before he confronted someone who may well believe him to be armed. But then, like he'd said… he'd done this at least once before and managed to not be killed.

There was an anxious pause, though in the darkness John wasn't sure whether it was for a few minutes or a solid hour. A night bird wailed in the skeletal elms behind him, and some wild creature screamed from behind the wilted hedge. A fox, perhaps, or something being killed by one. The torch Lestrade held seemed to disappear once he'd reached the tree line; a few minutes later and it reappeared again.

_"John!"_

Leaving the car door open, John cleared the hedge and ran up the path toward the light; Lestrade was shining it directly at him, not realising or caring that it was shining into his eyes and blinding him. As soon as John reached him, he grabbed the hand Lestrade had wrapped around the torch handle and dipped the beam onto the ground.

"What?" he demanded, puffing vapour into the dull light shining between them. "Oh, shit, you didn't find – ?"

Lestrade shook his head. He was wide-eyed, his breath emerging in short, sharp bursts.

"Greg, did you see anyone?" John demanded. His hand had instinctively snaked around to the back of his belt, fingers resting on the Browning. "Another person? Is there anyone else in the wood?"

Another shake of the head.

John glanced back at the dark wood behind Lestrade – a wood that could well be crawling with armed criminals, silently watching them from among the ghostly trees. "Okay, we need to get out of here."

It was then that he saw the envelope in Lestrade's left hand. Not the one he'd left with; that one had been manila yellow and this was white. Or it had been, and was now soaked through in places with stains and smears the colour of rust. John snatched the torch out of Lestrade's hand, flicked the setting down to a weaker beam, and concentrated the beam onto the envelope.

"What?" he said again. "Did you open it? What is it?"

"I found it under that... tree…" Lestrade got out with difficulty. "Yeah, I, uh, I opened it." Gingerly, he opened it again and drew out a bloodstained note between his gloved fingers. In the high beam of the torch, John read it:

_You lose this one_

But it was not the note that had shaken both men so badly, but that which was also enclosed in the stained folds of paper.


	6. No Advantage

The room was dark and cold when Molly woke; John had just come in and was gently closing the door behind him, though she could hear him breathing rapidly, as if he'd just run up the stairs. She squinted in the deep shadows and realised he had Charlie in his arms.

"Oh, what's wrong?" She got up and crossed the room to him. Charlie was sound asleep against his shoulder; she could feel him shaking very slightly, and she drew her arms around them both. "What happened, John? Why-"

John shook his head. "I just… need to… just… maybe go back to sleep for a bit… have her here with us, maybe…" he faltered.

She blinked as she realised John was intending to bring Charlie back to the bed with them; Brooke Cade would definitely _not_ approve, but she said nothing as he put the sleeping baby on the mattress and curled up next to her, still breathing a little quickly. She gave his hand a brief squeeze in the darkness, then gently patted his shoulder.

"I'm fine," he said, as if she'd asked him. "Just… need to have her here for a while. I'll tell you in the morning…"

* * *

 

By the time Molly woke the next morning the bedroom was flooded with pale sunshine, and neither John nor Charlie were in the bed with her. She got up, threw her dressing gown and slippers on, and wandered over to the nursery. Charlie was fast asleep in her cradle, snuggled up in her little fleece jumpsuit with the rabbit ears on the hood, another fashion statement courtesy of her doting Aunt Harry. She hadn't been wearing that the evening before; John must have changed her into it, though he'd never admit to actually _liking_ the bunny jumpsuit. Molly, smiling over her daughter and grateful that she was sleeping soundly, kissed her fingertips, laid them gently on Charlie's chubby, spittled cheek, and crept out again.

She found John downstairs at the kitchen table, nodding over a cup of coffee. He looked sharply up at her as she came in, as if she'd startled him; she could see the exhaustion in his eyes. He'd had a bad night. She went to the kettle and poured herself a cup of tea in silence. No sense in pushing him to talk if he didn't want to. It was only when she'd brought her tea back to the table and sat down beside him that he quietly spoke.

"They cut off his ears, Molly."

She blinked, unsure for a few seconds as to whether he'd said what she thought he had. "What?"

"It was his ears… in an envelope left at the drop-off point. They were cut off with a razor, Sherlock thinks… Mycroft identified them. Definitely Stephen's. His _bloody ears,_ Molly…!"

Molly was silent for a few seconds. If there was something she was not good at, and knew it, it was tact; she thought long and hard about what the right thing to say next would be. "Is Mycroft all right?" she finally murmured.

There had been no perceptible emotion in Mycroft's voice, nor in his eyes, when he'd confirmed the identity of the contents of that envelope with three words: "yes; they're Stephen's." But that had been a well-executed bluff, and everyone who had been present knew it.

John shook his head. "He's a mess," he said. "Well… as much of a mess as Mycroft ever is… you know what he's like. Pretends he doesn't care. And then after he identified… um, he got a text from the kidnappers. Blocked number, of course. They said that next, they're going to send us Stephen's eyes. Then his scrotum."

"Oh, my _God_." Molly clamped her hand to her mouth.

"The last time… the last time the kidnappers communicated, Mycroft actually spoke to Stephen on the phone," John explained. "This time, they just sent a text. It looked to me like Stephen's ears had been cut off hours before we found them..."

"Does Mycroft…"

John shook his head. "Nobody's said it. Not in front of him, anyway. But he's got to know, Molly. He's far from an idiot."

"But why would they do this? If you dropped off the money…"

"We don't know. They didn't say."

Molly, leaning over the table to squeeze John's cold hands in hers, wondered quietly to herself how on earth they were meant to follow the "rules" of the abduction if they didn't know what the kidnapper wanted, and what they'd done wrong.

"Send them to the lab," she said. "The ears, I mean. I might be able to help."

"You're on holidays-"

"Send them to the lab."

* * *

"Okay." Lestrade shuffled the papers in front of him. It was ten o'clock in the morning; Mycroft, looking pale and haggard under the fluorescent lights, was sitting across the interview table. Sally Donovan was at Lestrade's side, but only as a formality; there needed to be two officers there at all times, regardless of how Mycroft might feel about it. Donovan had been "requested" to take notes quietly and only speak when absolutely necessary.

"You know how this goes, Mycroft, yeah?" Lestrade sounded slightly hoarse; running one hand over his jaw, he realised he'd forgotten to shave that morning. "We'll take a break if you need it – just speak up. You have the right to legal counsel and to silence, though I must remind you that you're a witness, not a suspect."

Mycroft nodded.

"You're sure you don't want anyone else in here for you, you know, moral support? Perhaps Sherlock…?"

"I'd rather not."

Lestrade could understand his point. Sherlock was nearby, though not in earshot. He was, or had been last Lestrade had seen him, examining crime scene photographs that he'd arranged on the carpet of his office and muttering "blood, blood, blood" to himself under his breath.

"Okay." Lestrade glanced down at his notes for a second. "Could you tell us, please, what happened? Anything at all, no matter how pointless it might sound."

Mycroft leaned back in his chair, shutting his eyes as if thinking hard. "We spent most of the day at my apartment. We left there at two and arrived at the house shortly after three," he finally said.

"How did you get there?"

"Stephen's car. I was driving it."

"Why?"

"He asked me to. He didn't – doesn't –" Mycroft flinched. "Doesn't like driving when the roads are frosted over, you understand. Quite a nervous driver. Doesn't drive in the city at all."

"Did anything unusual happen during the trip?" Lestrade asked him. "Did you stop anywhere on the way? Or did you notice anyone following you, or any other suspicious activity like that?"

"No, on all accounts."

"Sure?"

"I'm quite sure." Mycroft looked at him frostily for a few seconds. "I am an observant person with a good memory, Inspector Lestrade."

Lestrade silently conceded the point. "Who else knew you were going out to Stephen's place?"

Mycroft sighed and considered. "Sherlock, of course," he said. "John and Molly. I'd made apologies not to be at their house for dinner. Which, of course, means that anyone they mentioned the situation to would know…" he paused. "That seems unlikely. There were no others."

"None?"

"Not to my knowledge. I have no idea who Stephen would have told, or why, and since he is currently _missing,_ we can hardly ask him…" Mycroft trailed off, then took a deep breath into his hand. "Anyhow," he continued serenely, quite himself again. "We arrived shortly after three, as I said, and we had an uneventful afternoon. Stephen put the evening meal on at half-five. We shared a bottle of wine between half-five and six, approximately."

"Okay." Lestrade was writing down his own notes, and Donovan had been scribbling away since the interview had begun. "But you weren't terribly affected by the alcohol? Neither of you?"

"I'm not a teenage girl, Lestrade."

"Nope, you're certainly not." Lestrade put his pen down. "Right, so we're up to six o'clock. Dinner's in the oven…" It had been found there, burned almost to charcoal, when the Dartford police had arrived. "You'd shared a bottle of wine. Then what happened?"

Mycroft looked at him stonily. "Then we had sex," he said.

"Okay." Lestrade wrote the information down in frank unconcern, then looked up at him and, seeing his expression, he half-smiled. "Mycroft, I've heard all sorts of shocking, horrible things in my career. 'Then we had sex' isn't one of them. So then what happened?"

"I went for a shower and put pyjamas on," Mycroft continued, his gaze diverting itself to random spots behind Lestrade. "I returned. Stephen was still on the bed."

"What was he wearing at that time?"

"Not a stitch, to the best of my recollection. We had a brief conversation."

"What about?"

"Nothing pertinent to the situation at hand." Mycroft cleared his throat.

Lestrade smiled grimly again. "I'll be the judge of that. It's not going to embarrass me, Mycroft."

Mycroft hesitated; he glanced down at his hands again, which seemed to strengthen his resolve. He took a deep breath. "He tried to tell me he loved me," he said reluctantly.

"Tried?"

"I don't… love people," Mycroft said awkwardly, making a painstaking effort not to look at Sally Donovan at all. "Not like that. I told him I wouldn't say it, and that talking about it again would only spoil the holiday. He asked if _he_ could say it while I abstained. I told him that was worse. We made light of it, and I went down to the cellar for more wine. While I was continuing back up the steps with it, I heard glass smash."

"And then?"

"And then the next thing I remember I was very cold, sitting next to a broken window, and on the telephone to John Watson, who was asking me to spell my name backwards."

Lestrade frowned. "You remember absolutely nothing at _all_ in between?" he asked. "I know it's difficult when you've been thumped over the head and had a nasty shock, but do your best, Mycroft. Even the tiniest thing could be important."

Mycroft was silent for a few seconds. "I've no memory of that time," he repeated a little stiffly. "However, along with... my hands…" He looked down at them again and flinched. "I believe I'm harbouring other physical evidence. If I may."

Lestrade made a languid "be my guest" gesture; Mycroft glanced at Donovan for the first time since he'd entered the interview room.

"I do find this rather awkward," he said, a little weakly.

"Donovan, turn your back," Lestrade said easily, without looking at her.

"What?"

Lestrade, still looking at Mycroft, cleared his throat. Rolling her eyes a little, Sally stood up from the chair beside him and made a great show of turning her back to him. Mycroft also stood up and painstakingly removed his jacket, waistcoat and shirt.

"Christ," Lestrade blurted out. "Do Sherlock and John know you look like you've been hit by a _car?"_

"Not exactly, and I'd prefer it if you didn't mention as such." Mycroft gestured to the dark dappled bruises on both arms, at the elbows and wrists. "Fingertip marks, wouldn't you say?"

Lestrade nodded.

"So I was restrained by more than one person, probably while this was being done." He gestured to his fingers again. "The level of intense bruising suggests that I was being held down with some force, which in turn suggests I was both conscious and struggling, but I have no memory of this happening at all."

Lestrade got up, walked around the desk, and inspected Mycroft's right shoulder for a second, then his left. "On your shoulders as well," he muttered as he went back around and slipped back into his seat. "Those'll need to be photographed, Mycroft, for evidence. Sorry. You'll thank me if some bonehead from the Dartford force suggests you held _yourself_ down like that. You'd need four extra arms to manage it."

* * *

After the dull fluorescent lights of the office, the glaring white winter sky above threw an almost painful light in Mycroft's face as he blundered out the front doors of the building in search of a place he could legally smoke.

 _He's dead,_ he thought dully, spitting thoughts out in disjointed fragments quite unlike the smooth, polished flow his brain usually produced. _His ears… died yesterday… couldn't possibly have survived…_

Mycroft had had occasion to see a lot of gory injuries in his career; he couldn't remember the last time that it had really affected him. But the contents of that sticky, smeared envelope that Lestrade had brought into the farmhouse and tried to bring to Sherlock's attention without his seeing…

Such small, insignificant things, those ears. Just two little flaps of skin, like the scrapings from a careless kitchen knife or the peel of an accidental sunburn. But they weren't carelessly or accidentally done. They had been cut off, by a person; probably sawn off with a razor blade. They'd been sent to Barts so that Molly Watson, good woman that she was, could confirm or deny that.

For one second, Mycroft hoped that Stephen had been dead when it had been done.

But such reflections weren't helping the case, or himself; and they certainly weren't helping him light the cigarette between his lips. He clenched his jaw and tried to make his shaking hands obey him.

"Have you got a spare one? I'm gasping."

Mycroft looked up, unalarmed and barely interested by the feminine voice that had suddenly broken in on his thoughts. Harriet Watson was standing nearby, ungloved hands shoved in her coat pockets, unruly sandy hair plaited tightly off her temples.

He paused for a few seconds, unlit cigarette in his mouth and lighter poised. Finally, he plucked another cigarette out of the packet and handed it over.

"Thanks. If you tell my brother I still smoke…" She paused to light her cigarette, and evidently decided not to say _I'll kill you._ "He thinks I gave it up twelve years ago."

 _You did,_ Mycroft reflected. Harriet Watson was an alcoholic, but it was clear from the way she fumbled with the cigarette that she hadn't smoked in some time. "John is not upstairs," he said stiffly. "I don't know where he is."

"I do," she said frankly. "He's at home asleep – Molly reckons he came home at half-past two this morning looking like he'd seen a ghost and didn't do much sleeping after that. Anyway, you might be surprised to know that I didn't come here looking for him."

"Indeed?"

"Yeah, came here looking for you, Your Highness… okay, I'm tired of watching you do that. Gimme." She snatched the lighter out of Mycroft's shaking hand and lit his cigarette for him; he had never had a lady make this gesture toward him, and smoked in embarrassed silence for a minute or two.

"So let's not bother with all the bullshit and get right to the point," Harry finally said in upbeat tones. "When was it for you?"

Mycroft blinked in surprise, then shook his head slightly. "When was what?"

"When you realised you were reading Playboy magazines for their well-written and informative articles."

Mycroft's mouth twitched slightly, but he said nothing.

"I just thought, in all this drama, you might need to vent about it to somebody," Harry went on matter-of-factly. "God knows I would. I owe you a million, anyway, for putting up the funds for my stop-drink-shrink. Which is going fine, by the way."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Haven't had a drink since Charlie arrived… I owe you a listening ear, if nothing else. And anyway, if I had to compile a list entitled 'People I Wouldn't Want To Talk About My Sex Life With", your brother's name would be highlighted, bolded and underlined twice at the top. And 'John' would be underneath, highlighted, bolded, italicised, 72-point font- oh, you get the idea. Good men in many ways, I'm sure. But fucking terrible agony aunts."

Mycroft's mouth twitched again, and he fidgeted. "Well, yes," he conceded. "In answer to your original question, I don't think I 'realised' I was…" he trailed off awkwardly, taking a drag of his cigarette.

"Gay?" Harry suggested. "I know a few more colourful terms…"

"So do I. I don't think we need to discuss them." Mycroft was looking down the street, watching a bus weave in and out of traffic and making a studied attempt at not meeting her gaze. She waited, looking not directly at him, but at a point somewhere behind his left elbow.

"I don't suppose I've ever really considered my… proclivities… analytically," he finally explained.

Harry shook her head. "Me neither," she said with a shrug. "I mean, I didn't just 'figure out' I was gay one day. I never really went around thinking I was _straight_. Things just… are what they are, don't you think? Such stupid labels we like to put on people."

"Rather."

"If John's being a prat about this, let me know and I'll hit him for you."

This time Mycroft smiled briefly. "No," he said. "Your brother has been… quite supportive…"

"Good; I'm glad. He's not a bad person, you know. Just… inclined to be a prat, that's all." She stubbed out her cigarette under her heel, in cheerful defiance of littering laws. "Anyway. I suppose I'd best be headed back… feel free to hack my phone or whatever it is you do instead of just asking people what their phone number is. I'm a good listener."

"You strike me as most capable of talking."

"They do tend to go hand in hand," she agreed. "Anyway. Offer's there. Don't beat yourself up about this, yeah? Feeling shitty won't find Stephen any faster. It wasn't your fault some psycho decided to kidnap him."


	7. Discovery

"You don't have to do this, Mycroft."

"Hmm?" Mycroft had clearly been very far away, mentally; he snapped back to attention and turned to Lestrade. They were standing in the relative privacy of the DI's office with its ergonomic furniture and reek of industrial carpet. Down the hall in the media room, a horde of reporters were awaiting the beginning of the press conference, scheduled for five minutes' time.

"You don't have to make this statement." Lestrade was struggling with his tie. "Donovan can do it. Or-"

"These people did not kidnap Stephen to make Sergeant Donovan suffer," Mycroft said tersely. "If their main objective in this was to make me suffer, they'll not be content with anything less than seeing me rather publicly..."

 _Suffer_.

"Okay." Lestrade glanced at himself in the opposite mirror and winced slightly, reflecting that he looked like he'd slept in a doorway the night before. Close enough; he'd been in the office until one and then spent until four nodding over his work at the dining room table at home until Melissa had got up and demanded he come back to bed with her. "But if things look like they're getting out of hand, I'm ending the conference. Just so's you know. The Daily Mail's journalists are bad. They're bad even as far as journalists go. If they smell blood in the water..."

Not the greatest analogy to make, considering the circumstances; the blood left at the crime scene, the blood smeared on the envelope in Churchdowne Wood, the blood that had drained from Mycroft's face sometime during Christmas Night and hadn't returned yet.

Mycroft's expression, at least didn't change; it had barely changed at any point in the last couple of days, and Lestrade thought to himself that it was all too likely he hadn't even heard his remark. It was as if Mycroft had retreated into some secret part of himself, all that blood and vitality drawn inwards just to keep everything going on a basic level. Now Lestrade finally understood the connection between medical shock - _blood being withdrawn but all from the most vital of organs -_ and emotional shock.

_The body protects itself by shutting down what it doesn't strictly need. The problem is when it shuts down stuff it DOES need._

Lestrade was not used to thinking in critical abstracts and would never have fully recognised or said it, but Mycroft Holmes had spent the best part of forty years protecting his emotions by shutting down what he didn't strictly need. And now the problem: he was shutting off what he did need.

Lestrade was just contemplating whether to try to step in and revisit his point with less provocative wording when he was startled by his phone ringing. The Caller ID had Molly Watson's name emblazoned on it.

"Hi, Greg," she said gently. "Is this a bad time to talk ?"

Lestrade glanced over at Mycroft, who seemed entirely occupied with the state of his cravat, though he was probably hanging on every word.

"Nope, all free," he said, trying to sound enthusiastic and failing utterly. Molly, the sweet, hapless Molly who usually couldn't see subtext no matter how hard she looked for it, stopped dead for a few seconds, obviously trying to think of how best to proceed. Lestrade held onto a breath. From the sounds of things, this wasn't going to be good news.

"I... um. I had a look at the, uh, the ears," she fumbled. "As far as I can see, they have ragged edges, like they've been sawn off with a serrated blade, not cut in one clean... you know. Chop." She paused, obviously realising far too late that her word choice had been a little less than tactful. "And Greg," she went on, "I think that it could have been done more than twenty-four hours before you... found them. Mycroft is sure they're Stephen's?"

"Yeah."

"Then they were cut off before you and John went to drop off the money. You didn't lose. You couldn't have won."

Lestrade coughed slightly. He wanted to ask the obvious: _was Stephen alive when his ears were cut off?_ He glanced over at Mycroft's still face, his expression as stony and fortified as the statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square.

"Okay," he said instead. If Molly wasn't volunteering that having his ears sawn off would have killed Stephen, or that they'd been cut off while he was dead, Lestrade figured it could be inferred he could be still alive. "Thanks."

"John says there was a lot of blood in the house when you got there. Maybe whoever did this cut his ears off while he was still there. Maybe he's still alive."

"Maybe," he conceded carefully; Mycroft's proximity prohibited him from mentioning John's estimate that Stephen had lost nearly two pints of blood. "Um. Thank you. I'll talk more later, Molly."

He softly disconnected the line and took a deep breath.

"News?" Mycroft enquired.

"Sort of." Lestrade ran his fingers through his hair. "Long story. Nothing vital. I'll explain it all later." Blatantly dismissive, if not downright lying, but Mycroft was going to have to live with it for the time being. The last thing he needed two minutes before facing the press was to sit and wonder if Stephen had been mutilated right there at the house. "Right, let's do this," he said. "And you're absolutely sure you don't want someone else with you?" Most people did; Mycroft Holmes wasn't "most people", but it was worth an ask anyway. "It doesn't have to be Sherlock..."

He broke off. He had no idea at all if Mycroft had any other friends and, if so, who on earth they were.

"I'm perfectly all right."

Lestrade shrugged. "Okay," he said. "Where is Sherlock, anyway?"

"I'm sure I have no idea. He is the least of my concerns just now."

* * *

Mycroft had underestimated Dolan, Sherlock reflected, examining the chubby, dimpled man sitting across the interview table on the second administration floor of Wandsworth Prison. He'd either not seen how much Eric Dolan hated Paul Doherty, or he hadn't fully understood how powerful a motivator that hatred could be. Odd that he'd not realised either of these things. But then, Sherlock remembered a drizzly morning standing on a rooftop with a dead man while his brain gave a series of ear-splitting screams. Caring really wasn't an advantage.

The room surrounding them was bare and chill; the fluorescent lights searched out every nook and corner and hid nothing. Sherlock adjusted his scarf slightly.

"Two days," he said.

Dolan took the cigarette out of his mouth, blowing a puff of rancid smoke into Sherlock's face. The detective did not react.

"Might need more, Mr. Holmes," he commented. But Sherlock shook his head.

"No," he said calmly, with unremitting precision. "Two days... Sixty hours at most. The delivery of the ears indicates that Doherty means business; he's probably going to do as he claimed and keep mutilating him until he dies of blood loss and shock, or slit his throat on the 31st, whichever comes first. You need to find him as quickly as possible. Do nothing when you find him, but report to me immediately."

This, Sherlock knew, was going to be the difficult part. If Dolan really hated Doherty so much, his impulse might be to kill the man on sight. And a dead man couldn't explain where Stephen was being held hostage.

"It's plausible that I may be able to present Stephen to Mycroft, alive but without eyes and ears," he went on. "Castrating the man will be a game-changer. Judging by the delivery of the ears, we have sixty hours at most." He clasped his hands together and leaned across the table. "So tell me. Is Doherty in the habit of killing people by progressive mutilation?"

"Once got arrested for biting a woman's face," Dolan offered casually. "Nearly took her nose clean off. I was there."

"Charming."

Dolan chuckled grimly. "You've no idea, Mr. Holmes."

"Oh, I think I do. He wouldn't be the first low-life I've been forced to come into contact with. Not by far." Sherlock's lip twitched for a moment; he took a deep breath. For the past few years, he had measured every criminal he'd every known against James Moriarty. And none had even come close; certainly not Paul Doherty. Moriarty would never have bitten a woman's face, unless he'd manipulated her into asking him to do it.

"If I agree to this - and I'm inclined to change my mind about things without warning - then you will be working for me," he said. "Not my brother, and not the Met."

"Got you."

"Depending on circumstances, you may be called upon to work _directly_ with me. In which case you will do exactly as I tell you, when I tell you."

Dolan broke into a gappy smile. "I heard you were hands-on in your work, Mr. Holmes."

"Always. It's why I'm the best. I rarely outsource, so consider your invitation to work for me as the honour it is. You will, of course, be recompensed for any and all -"

"I don't work for money."

Sherlock paused at this, but there was nothing coy about the way Dolan had said it.

"It seems we understand one another." Sherlock cleared his throat. "And now, understand this: if you betray me, you will regret it. Though not for long, of course." He slid his chair out and stood up, fumbling in his coat pockets for his gloves. "I've heard enough. Let me speak with the authorities."

* * *

Mycroft seemed calm and collected before the television cameras, though Lestrade, sitting in the chair beside him, thought that he detected a faint tremor in his hands as he held the conference notes before him and gave a brief outline on the circumstances of the kidnapping.

"Stephen Hassell is a good man with no enemies," he wrapped up in unemotional tones, though he then cleared his throat. "He hasn't done anything to deserve any cruel treatment. Firstly, I would like to urge anyone who may have seen or heard something unusual in the vicinity on Christmas night to come forward, particularly anyone who observed a Toyota van travelling westward on the Abingdon Road shortly after seven that evening."

He paused.

"Secondly, I urge those responsible for this abduction to please contact me as soon as possible. I'm anxious to speak to Stephen again and establish his safety, and I'm willing to go to great lengths to see him freed."

So far, so good. Mycroft was everything he was supposed to be, or at least appeared that way: calm, polite, obliging. It was only when Donovan, sitting on Mycroft's other side, announced that they would now be fielding questions that Lestrade's heart sank. This was the feeding frenzy. A middle-aged reporter with one of the evening papers, all veneered teeth and slicked-back hair, started the bidding high.

"Mr Holmes," he said, "why do you think the kidnappers took Stephen and left you behind?"

Mycroft looked at him in silence, clearly taking in the meaning of the question. For a second, a quiver of helpless, frustrated rage passed over his face, then his dauntless mask returned. Nelson at Trafalgar. Wellington at Waterloo.

"Well, because their primary aim in this is to force my hand-"

"To what purpose?"

"I don't know." Mycroft clamped his lips together briefly. "Hence my appeal for them to make contact with me as soon as possible."

"Do you think the circumstances of this kidnapping were... unusual?"

Lestrade held his breath, partly with nerves and partly to prevent himself from telling the journalist exactly what he thought of him. It was true that this sort of question skirted the line of decency and could be interpreted a variety of ways. But Mycroft was no fool.

"I think," the elder Holmes said slowly, "the fact that you've received over ten thousand pounds in, shall we say, _charitable donations_ from an important personage in the House of Commons to keep his besmudged family history out of your paper is far _more_ unusual."

"No more questions." Lestrade stood up, taking support of Mycroft's arm by habit , just as if he were a grieving member of the ordinary rank-and-file. There was a sudden flurry from the press; several bulb flashes went off, and Lestrade could picture the Daily Mail headlines there on the spot.

"Mr. Holmes, just one more question, please," a blonde, frowsy woman sitting in the third row suddenly broke in, more forcefully than the others.

Mycroft looked up at her.

"We've just received word that a corpse has been found in sparse woodland seven miles east of Dartford," she said matter-of-factly. "Our sources tell us that the body is male, Caucasian and headless. Do you think it might be Stephen Hassell?"

Silence. Lestrade glanced at Donovan in alarm.

"I'd not yet been made aware of this discovery," Mycroft said hollowly.

"Me neither," Lestrade growled, glancing again at Donovan. "And if the Daily Mail have concealed vital information from the police so that they could drop it for maximum impact on a witness during a live press conference, rest assured that those responsible will find themselves defending charges in court. No more questions."


	8. Tease and Reveal

"Mycroft, will you listen to me?"

It didn't seem likely that he would, Lestrade reflected in despair. Mycroft had reached the lift before he'd been able to catch him up; he'd just managed to prise the closing door open and get in, though once the door had closed again he did not select a floor. Mycroft did not select one either, though he was looking studiously at the selection of floor buttons as if they were written in some dialect he wasn't acquainted with.

"We didn't _know_ ," Lestrade insisted. "That was the first I'd heard of it. Do you seriously think that I'd put you in front of the media if I knew someone had found-?"

He trailed off, realising that Mycroft didn't care whether he knew or didn't know about the corpse before the press statement had gone live. Why should he? Dead was dead. There was something in Mycroft's hunched shoulders and restless hands that Lestrade had never seen before. He was still looking over the floor numbers beside him.

"Call your brother," he said.

"Lestrade-"

"Call your brother, or I'll do it for you. He's working his arse off on this case, he'll want to be somewhere he can be useful to you. The taskforce is going to follow up the new lead and otherwise continue the case. Even if it's Stephen that they've found - _especially if -_ we need to catch this bastard."

Before Mycroft could speak again, Lestrade slammed his hand against the Open Door button and the lift doors parted efficiently. As he passed through the open plan office on his way back to his own private one, Dyer stood up from his desk, phone at one ear.

"Sir?"

Lestrade stopped. "Yeah?"

"Just been in touch with Doherty's parole officer, sir. He's gone to ground and can't be found. And so has his brother Gary and his brother-in-law, a Brian Merchant. Merchant's got a 1997 Toyota van, sir."

"Great. Circulate the plate number as quick as you can. Donovan – " He called across to where she was also on the phone. "You and I are going out to Dartford this afternoon to see about this corpse they've found."

* * *

John sat back in his chair and rubbed his tired eyes for a second. Computer screens had always struck him as difficult to read from for any length of time, and it had been just on two hours since he'd started. He glanced up at the clock blearily. Charlie, lying on her tummy on her play-rug near his feet, had just started a low-level whining and was kicking at the floor in annoyance.

"Yeah, I know, kid," John muttered. "I'll feed you in a minute."

The man of action had somehow along the way become Sherlock's primary researcher during an important case. It wasn't always a role he relished, but he had to admit that it was an obvious one. Of course, Sherlock was more than capable of doing his own research. But when he was in the lab glued to the microscope by one hand while on the phone to the Home Secretary with the other, it wasn't always practical for him to be knee-deep in books, too.

And, John reflected with a sense of pride, it wasn't just a default position while everyone else did more important and interesting things. Over the years that he'd known Sherlock, John had mentally gathered every compliment or half-compliment the man had ever given him, even if it had been grudging or completely accidental. _Thorough. Careful. Organised. Prompt._

There was one compliment Sherlock had always denied him, but that John had never denied himself. Sherlock supposed that John had never been able to make any sense of the data he collected on cases. Well, he was about to be proven wrong again, because _this_ development had been well worth two hours and a raging headache. John fumbled through his phone menu and brought up Sherlock's number, glancing down at Charlie as the phone line began to purr and then clicked into action.

"Yes?" Sherlock seemed even more terse than usual, and had called John not five minutes after the conclusion of the press conference to discuss why. _We continue this case assuming that Stephen is alive, John. Until we have absolute proof that he's not._

"Sherlock, it's me," he said, even though he'd never known Sherlock to answer his phone without checking the caller ID first. He suppressed the urge to ask him if he'd caught him at a bad moment. "I've been doing some research about this Doherty guy. Arms trafficking in 2002. Got eleven years -"

"Yes, we've already established that-"

"Wait, hang on. I think I've found something useful," John continued. On the floor, Charlie had worked up into squawks that were shortly to become screams; just at that moment Molly appeared in the doorway. John went over to the refrigerator in search of baby food while Molly picked Charlie up and started to comfort her.

"Doherty had a wife and a ten year old daughter," John continued over the noise, handing the jar to Molly and then wandering out into the hall. "The wife committed suicide four months after he was incarcerated... and it happened on New Year's Eve, Sherlock. Or what he would have called Old Year's Night. I'm trying to find out where she's buried. Because..." He fumbled for a second. "Because if he's still grieving, I don't think he'd want to go too far away from her. We might be able to narrow down where he is."

"And the daughter?"

"Not a lot to go on there. There was a newspaper article about Cathy Doherty's brother Brian and his wife applying for custody of her, and being denied because of some prior convictions of his."

"What convictions?"

"Weapons and drugs. Anyway, it looks like the daughter went into the foster care system. I've only got media records here, so I don't even know what her name is. Might have disappeared... I couldn't find any record of her after her uncle was denied custody, but I guess that's the point of privacy laws."

"So there's Doherty's motive, John. Mycroft was the star witness for the prosecution at his trial, and he's not exactly a difficult man to remember. If Doherty's wife killed herself because her husband was in jail, he'll no doubt blame Mycroft for that... and for the girl disappearing into the care system. Don't you remember?"

"Remember..."

Sherlock paused again for a few seconds, then audibly swallowed. "Well, perhaps you wouldn't,' he said. "What... Moran said about you. He thought I'd killed his best friend, and... wanted to kill mine."

There was silence down the line for a few moments.

"There was something awfully odd about this from the beginning," Sherlock said quickly. "And that's the threat to slit Stephen's throat. Highly specific, and a messy and very impractical murder technique..." he trailed off thoughtfully for a second. "Lestrade's in Dartford this afternoon with Donovan. See if you can get onto Gregson, John, get him to let you access further records of what happened to Doherty's family. I think you'll find that the wife committed suicide by slitting her own throat."

"What's that mean?"

"It means that Doherty's trying to exact revenge on Mycroft, and deal with his own trauma by recreating it. This is good news, John. If we can predict Doherty's movements and behaviour, it gives us a chance." He took a breath. "I'll leave it with you. Mycroft and I are on our way to Dartford now to identify this body."

* * *

_"Kiss Papi goodbye, Mycroft."_

_Mummy's tones indicated that this was more an order than a suggestion. Mycroft, barely able to see above the stiff white mattress, clasped his grubby fingers together and looked in trepidation at the cadaverous, blotchy old man lying wheezing on the hospital bed in front of him. No, he couldn't. He couldn't kiss Papi when he gurgled at every breath, when he fixed him with that sunken-eyed, predatory gaze, when he reeked of California Poppy and Dettol and rubbing alcohol._

_"Pippa," the old man croaked. "There are some sweeties..." He gestured weakly to the bedside drawer on his left. Mummy went to it and rummaged through it for a minute, then put a wrapped sweet in his bony hand. He held it out to the small boy still staring at him in wonder and fear._

_"Myc," he said. "Papi's got a sweetie for you..."_

_"Go on, Mycroft," Mummy said again, nudging him forward._

_Mycroft took a deep breath. He wanted that sweet... and he liked Papi. He didn't see him very often, but when he did, Papi called him "Myc" and sat him on his knee and gave him cakes and sweets and talked to him like he was a small child and not a very short adult. He understood things._

_Papi's skeletal hand edged closer, with the purple wrapped sweet rustling between his fingers. Mycroft shrank back against his mother's legs._

_"Mycroft..." she admonished. "Stop being so ungrateful and go and kiss your grandfather. Now."_

_The old man smiled at him and beckoned him over, but Mycroft screamed. He had never before seen Papi without his false teeth in._

_And then he was running out into the corridor, little feet slipping and sliding along the polished floor, not stopping until he got to the closed double-doors at the far end. He threw himself against them, as if hoping to break them down; seconds later warm arms wrapped around him, and he burst into tears._

_"No, Mummy!" he wailed, struggling against her grip and pushing at the door with his sticky hands. "No kiss Papi!"_

_"All right, all right." Mummy's cool hands swiped his fringe out of his hot, tear-smudged face. "We're going home, and you're going straight to bed."_

_She'd picked him up then. Clinging to her like a baby monkey and burying his face in her shoulder, he heard her tell someone nearby, "he's tired and frightened. We'll try again tomorrow. He's only three."_

_Mycroft had sniffled miserably the whole way out of the hospital. It was only when Mummy was putting him into the car that he took his fingers out of his mouth._

_"Mummy," he hiccupped. "Sweet?"_

_"No, Mycroft. That was from Papi." She finished with his seatbelt and drew back. "Hands."_

_He put his hands up while she firmly shut the car door beside him._

* * *

 

Papi had died the night after Mycroft had run screaming from him. There were no more sweeties, no more chances to kiss him, no more time to grow up and learn and understand and overcome his fears.

Mycroft had the mind of a scientist, but he had never considered becoming one. Because each time he stepped inside a medical laboratory or a hospital, he was for a second barely three years old and terrified of one of the only people who had ever shown him affection.

So while the morgue at tiny, homey-looking Livingstone Hospital smelled strongly of Dettol and rubbing alcohol to ordinary people, to Mycroft, it reeked of bitter death. Of course, on the surface of things it was about as pleasant as a morgue could possibly be; the place was clean and sparse and light, and the staff were professional, but that was neither here nor there, given the circumstances.

For Mycroft, the only real comfort from others was no comfort at all. Fortunately he was in good company for that, he reflected as he was shown into the viewing area, a dark little box behind a bright window. Through it, he could see a sheet-covered form lying on a trolley. No tell-tale bump where the head should be. Sherlock stood beside him, grim and silent, his hands behind his back. No lavish and dangerous sympathy from _him_ , nor from the morgue technician who suddenly appeared through the connecting door and approached the body. Middle-aged man, bald, wore glasses that were too big for his face. Utterly businesslike. Not always a good thing, Mycroft reflected, but at the moment, highly preferable to that sweet-natured girl John was married to, who quite against her job description handed out sympathetic hugs to most of the families she dealt with.

The Watsons were going to be insufferable about this, with kind words and offers of help and support. Kind words couldn't bring anyone back to life again, and support... what was support? Quite useless. The fumbling of awkward people to change a situation that couldn't be changed.

"Let me know when you're ready," the technician said over his shoulder, his thick fingers playing with the edges of the sheet. "I need to remind you that, given the injuries, this may be upsetting." He sounded as if he were explaining some sort of scientific principle. "Turn away if you have to, and say so if you feel faint or nauseated or would like to take a minute."

Beside him, Sherlock planted his feet slightly apart and exhaled, but said nothing.

"I'm ready," Mycroft heard himself say.

"Are-"

"Show me."

Like a vile striptease, the technician lifted the sheet from the corpse's blotched, purple feet first, lifting it slowly upwards until the final reveal.

Mycroft's sharp gaze darted several times over the mangled, discoloured human being on the trolley, with its gaping neck wound, exposed vertebrae stump, and – somehow the most difficult thing – the empty headrest beyond.

"No," he said. "No, it's not him."


	9. No Coincidence

There was a moment where all sound and movement seemed hushed like a blown-out candle; the second of silence between the fall of a bomb and the outbreak of chaos.

Then Mycroft drew a deep breath. "Definitely not him," he repeated in stronger tones. "Wrong build entirely. The shoulders are too narrow, and the sternum is sitting too low." He gestured casually with one hand. "Moreover, this man has several blemishes Stephen lacks, which he couldn't have acquired in the time he's been in the hands of his abductors."

Sherlock peered impassively through the glass at the mangled figure. "Well, if it's not Stephen," he said slowly, "then the question becomes: who is it? This area of the world isn't known for frequent mutilation killings. Rather a coincidence."

"Not a coincidence," Mycroft responded. "And you know it." He had never had much time for Sherlock's self-professed love of coincidences. That such things inarguably did sometimes happen interfered with his carefully-wrought, ordered view of the world. "This man was killed and dumped specifically so that he would be found in precisely the right time and place."

"Diverting time and resources away from finding Stephen."

Mycroft looked wry. "Yes," he said. "Though I suspect he has a more personal reason than that."

Sherlock was silent for a few seconds, looking again at the corpse on the viewing trolley. This was unexpected. Paul Doherty may have been an amateur at kidnapping people, but he was determined enough in this venture to commit a murder for, apparently, no other reason but to pretend the corpse was Stephen's. Sherlock had known just one other man cold enough to do that: James Moriarty.

"I think," he said, "we need to get those ears DNA tested."

"No point," Mycroft said tersely, resting on his heels. "Quite aside from the time it would take to get a result – months, I imagine – DNA testing is only effective if one has DNA to match it with."

"And Stephen's records aren't on file?"

Mycroft shook his head briefly. "I made it clear to the relevant authorities many years ago that so far as science is concerned, the people in my employ do not exist. DNA records tend to complicate matters."

The corner of Sherlock's mouth twitched. Over the past thirteen years, Mycroft had had five "personal assistants", and all of their roles had varied according to their strengths and weaknesses. William had been a thug with a degree and a nice suit, hired during a period where Mycroft was making enemies and hadn't perfected the art of dealing with them yet. Then Alistair, who was more of a gentleman and knew how to negotiate a sharp deal – and exact the consequences if one reneged on that deal. After that it was Pamela, a fortyish spinster. She was a mathematical and organisational genius who kept all of Mycroft's affairs in order, and who had resigned after eight months to marry Lord Townsend. Then Christina Tate, the girl he called "Anthea"; largely useless, but presented well to others and had inner reserves of strength, resolve and ingenuity that had helped Mycroft out of more than one tight spot, both politically and personally.

And finally, Stephen - dull, pleasant Stephen James Hassell. No DNA on file, because his predecessors had taken so readily to the morally grey part of Mycroft's career. No DNA, even though the man had probably never stolen so much as a pencil from Mycroft's desk and had no ability or inclination to hurt anyone.

"No living relatives, I suppose."

"Of course not." Mycroft shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"There never are. Too easy."

"There's a sister, I think, but she lives in Vancouver and we don't have time to track her down for DNA testing. We go with the assumption that the ears are Stephen's. But this is not. He planted this."

"You keep saying "he"," Sherlock remarked carefully. From the corner of his eye, he could see Mycroft turn to him questioningly, but he kept his gaze ahead at nothing in particular. Putting forward suggestions and ideas to Mycroft had always been a somewhat dangerous practice. Once Mycroft agreed with something, it almost invariably became an empirical fact.

And now Mycroft was waiting for this new information to process. Sherlock took a rare few moments to consider how best to express it.

"I'm sure Brian Merchant and Gary Doherty are assisting him," he finally said.

"No doubt," Mycroft conceded, as if the fact that he had more than one adversary had never fully occurred to him before now. "But it's personal to Paul."

"I think it may be personal to Brian and Gary, too. You neglected to mention what happened to Cathy Doherty."

"I have no idea what you're referring to," Mycroft said brittly. "Once Doherty was incarcerated, I had better things to do with my time and energy than follow the minutiae of his life."

"She committed suicide, Mycroft. Four months after Doherty was put away."

Mycroft looked at him in silence for a few seconds. At first there was nothing but a dull, repressed kind of shock in his gaze; then, for a second, a chilly sort of reproach. It was as if he were saying, _why would you tell me that? I didn't want to know that._

Abruptly, he turned back to the body. "Well," he said in his usual clipped manner. "I suppose we've solved the mystery as to why Paul Doherty is so determined to make me suffer."

* * *

John had always had the impression that Detective Inspector Tobias Gregson didn't like him. But there was no call to take that personally, because Gregson didn't really seem to like anybody. The two men had only spoken a handful of times in the years John had worked with Sherlock, and John had never had the pleasure of working directly with him. But Gregson's lanky, scowling entity was regularly seen stalking the hallways and vestibules of the office like an ill-tempered ghost.

He was particularly brusque with John when he arrived at New Scotland Yard just after twelve with Charlie, who was nestled fast asleep in her pink-lined wicker carry basket. Gregson eyed her with deep misgivings, but said nothing.

"I know," John said apologetically, placing the basket gently on the floor. "I don't usually take this one everywhere, but my wife's at work at the moment..." Molly was, or last he'd heard from her forty minutes before, spending her so-called holiday knee-deep in research into what the wounds from various knives looked like under magnification. "But she won't be any trouble, promise."

Gregson gave Charlie another very dubious glance; John could practically see him reflecting that nobody _else_ in the building was allowed to take their children to 'work.' He suddenly remembered that Gregson had four kids of his own, though he was sure they were much older than Charlie. He couldn't quite imagine Gregson's office festooned with colourful crayon drawings of ambiguous spindle-legged creatures, lovingly crafted at nursery school and clumsily addressed "to daddy".

The first time he'd been in Lestrade's office he'd seen one solitary indication that the man had kin, beyond the gold band on the fourth finger of his left hand. It was a small birthday card, furtively perched on the desk between his landline handset and a pale ring on the surface of the desk that marked where he put his mug of coffee. Generic card, bought from a Sainsbury's checkout or some other thoughtless place. In it was written, "To Dad, from Hayley and Matthew." The kids' names were each written in different handwriting, and the card had then been nearly five months old. You didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out.

Gregson was different; and sadly, it was Gregson who was scowling at him, not Lestrade. "How can I help you, Dr. Watson?" he asked, politely but tersely.

John glanced back down at Charlie again. _An hour, Charlotte Mary Watson. Please give me an hour, and I promise I won't be playing with the gun when your first date comes to pick you up._

"Inspector Lestrade said you could help me," he said, giving his attention back to Gregson. "With records into the indictment and trial of Paul Doherty in 2002."

"Did he now?"

That was not, in fact, what Lestrade had said; it was what _Sherlock_ had said. But John nodded. If there was anything useful he'd learned from the great Sherlock Holmes, it was to never underestimate the value of a well-placed bluff. _Get someone to believe they're following orders, and they'll do just about anything for you._

Gregson was looking at him impassively, but John did not back down. After a few seconds, the DI let out a breath. "Just a second," he muttered.

He pulled out his mobile phone and put it to his ear; for a few seconds he paused, then opened with, "Lestrade, do I owe you a favour I've forgotten about? 'Cause I've got John Watson here, and he seems to think you said I could show him records of Paul Doherty's indictment..."

John tensed, but only for a moment. Lestrade probably had little to no idea of what was going on, but he adapted quickly, and he'd probably back him over Gregson.

He glanced down at Charlie again as Gregson, phone still at one ear, stalked away to his office and shut the door behind him.

* * *

"Number's busy," Sherlock muttered, holding his phone to his ear with one hand and shutting the car door with the other. "I don't leave messages, and he doesn't read them. I'll call back." He shoved the phone in the console and jammed the keys in the ignition, starting the engine with a lot more vim than was strictly necessary. Beside him, Mycroft fidgeted for his seatbelt. Sherlock knew he absolutely hated being his passenger, but both John and the Kent paramedics had been more than adamant on that point: absolutely no driving for forty-eight hours at least.

"Important business, is it?" he hissed impatiently.

"He's on the case, Mycroft. Give him five minutes. Lestrade doesn't really have anything to talk about for longer than that."

As he checked the flow of traffic to merge, Sherlock's phone blooped out a text alert; regardless of the fact that he was preoccupied, he grabbed at it and checked the incoming text. A brand new number, for a brand new prepaid phone he'd purchased just that day.

_arrived norich give me til 6 2 have ur man dolan_

Sherlock blinked and put the phone back in the console, then merged onto the road without speaking. Obviously Dolan's determination to wreak havoc with the law and vengeance on anyone who crossed him had precluded his learning basic English, or at least, precluded his using it in a text.

"London?" he enquired.

Mycroft grunted in assent. He was staring absently out the window, though there wasn't much to look at. The sky was a dull, iron grey; they were just then negotiating a roundabout as they pursued the arterial road. Above, an overpass pedestrian bridge reached over them like a great skeletal arm. He leaned back in the chair and shut his eyes.

"What are you thinking about?" Sherlock asked at length. Mycroft half-opened his eyes.

"I'm imagining myself standing in a hospital room," he said slowly.

"Stephen's."

"Yes."

"Hearing from a doctor that he'll recover completely."

"Yes."

Sherlock paused, unable to explain that what had kept him going in the weeks John had clung to life after being shot was an image: John unleashing a torrent of abuse worthy of a dress sergeant on him, and then punching him for good measure. It had never happened, but the hope that John might one day be well enough to do it was what had mattered.

"And Doherty?" he ventured.

"I'm imagining that _fucking_ _bastard_ on a morgue slab, minus his head," Mycroft snarled. "And then I'm imagining myself _spitting_ on the – "

He cut himself off as abruptly as a switched off radio, and swiped at his mouth as if to clean it.

"The what?" Sherlock nearly smiled. "Go on, Mycroft, say it. You've already said "fuck", and Mummy's not here to be shocked."

Mycroft pursed his lips up into a prim, intractable line of British propriety. "I'd rather not."

"Yes, you would."

Mycroft had never said the dreaded _really terrible swear word_ before, though plenty of the boys he'd bunked with at school had used it often – usually in its strictly anatomical sense, once their contraband MAD magazines had been replaced with what some politely called _smut._ He'd once written it on a desk because a boy named Clarence Barfield had paid him ten pounds to do it, but all the money in England wouldn't have convinced Mycroft to actually _say_ it. After all, in an ill-judged moment of tween rebellion, he'd once said "fuck" in front of Mummy. She'd slapped him so hard his neck had clicked. The really terrible swear word would probably get him killed. The possibility of that outcome still bothered him, even though Mummy had been in her grave for twenty years.

"I am _waiting_ ," Sherlock said.

"He's a..." Mycroft hesitated, and then out it tumbled: the _really terrible swear word._

Twenty minutes of silence followed; after goading him into something he felt genuinely ashamed of, even Sherlock knew better than to engage Mycroft in any further conversation. The next time he spoke was when his phone rang; he muttered politely for Mycroft to pass it to him, and Mycroft did so without any accompanying bitching about the dangers of distracted driving. Sherlock, glancing between the phone and the road, was able to note the caller ID before answering.

"John. News?"

"Yeah." John's voice sounded slightly warped, as if he were a long distance away; Sherlock glanced at the horizon, devoid of reception towers, and hoped they were driving out of and not into a drop zone. "Listen, I've been able to grab some records from the police databases, but I don't know how much use they're going to be. Doherty's daughter's name was Eliza Catherine, and I doubt she'd have changed it when she was adopted, 'cause she was eleven at the time."

"She probably changed her surname, however, especially if she was feeling ambivalent about her father. And either way, she could be married by now and have a totally unrelated surname."

"Yeah, I know it doesn't help much, but it's a start. She was put into foster care in January of 2003 and was placed for adoption in July of 2004."

"And who adopted her?"

"No idea in the world. I've just been on the phone to Norwich County Council, but they won't give me any information without a court order." There was a sort of blunted shuffling noise in the background of the call. "Or they might play nicely after a call from a particularly influential man named Holmes."

"Mycroft couldn't negotiate worth a damn right now, John." Sherlock disregarded the look of controlled outrage that passed over Mycroft's face. He held his hand out, as if to take up both the phone and the challenge; Sherlock took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at him and firmly shake his head.

"Yeah," John continued. "I didn't mean him, though."

Sherlock calmly ignored a second insistent 'give me the phone' gesture from Mycroft. "Fine," he said. "Text me the number and I'll be on it as soon as possible. What about the wife?"

"No record of suicide method that I can find... they don't stick things like that in the papers, and it wasn't a Yard issue. The autopsy wasn't done at Barts, but Molly's on it."

"Excellent..." Sherlock trailed off. "Is that Charlotte?" he demanded, addressing the gurgling in the background of John's call.

"Uh, yeah." John suddenly sounded distracted as the gurgling escalated into a thin sort of whining noise. "Just woke up, and probably wondering where she is."

"And where exactly is that?"

"Right now? Gregson's office. I've got to go, Sherlock. I'll keep in touch."

Sherlock's mouth twitched despite himself; he hung up the phone and put it back in the console without a further word.

"You idiot," Mycroft growled.

"Shut up."

"I'm going to call John back."

"Good for you. He won't play – he's already convinced you're not in a fit state to parley with a trio of kidnappers. Pass me my phone."

The phone had just bleeped out a text alert; sighing, Mycroft retrieved it and put it in Sherlock's hand. He curled his fingers around it, sliding his thumb across to reveal the new text. Eric Dolan had only been out of prison for a few hours, but he'd been as good as his word.

_muchel frend reckons pauls missus burried eccles on sea. St johns church. will find out let u know dolan_


	10. He's Around

_Are you absolutely sure? – SH_

* * *

_Im standing next 2 grave mr homes says catherine jean doherty 18 june 1967-31 dec 2002._

* * *

_No sign of Doherty? – SH_

* * *

_Not yet but reckon hes around_

* * *

_Be wary. Don't be seen in that churchyard, and keep a wide berth if you do find him. Let me know immediately and I'll issue further instructions. And for God's sake, use a spellcheck or an autocorrect or something – SH_

* * *

Dolan dismissed the relatively meaningless latter half of Sherlock's text and shoved the phone in his pockets, followed by both his chapped hands. His text to "Mr. Holmes" had been true to the letter; he looked again at the glossy, speckled tombstone before him, with its gold lettering and generic, stencilled rose transfers.

Eric Dolan was a thief, a liar and a criminal. But he was not a wife-beater, a rapist, a kidnapper, a kiddy-diddler or a murderer.

True, Mycroft Holmes was missing a _man_ , not a woman. But then, Dolan reasoned, it was sort of the same thing, really. So far as he could relate to things with his narrow understanding of the world, Paul Doherty had kidnapped and tortured some bloke's _wife_. Dolan had never heard the expression "honour amongst thieves" and wouldn't really have understood it if he had, but that hadn't stopped him putting the principle into practice, as instinctively and easily as breathing. Steal from 'The Man'?: why not? Nobody was going to miss what you took, except maybe some rich bastard who had no right to it in the first place. Steal the life savings of some little old lady? No. Eric Dolan's gran had been dead for fifteen years, but he'd had one. He also had a wife, two kids, and six months to live, and since the obliging Mr. Holmes had sprung him out a good five weeks before his sentence ended, he was prepared to be a good sport and help him out in return.

And the thought of Kim and the kiddies prompted him to pull his phone out again as he walked through the icy, windswept churchyard and up toward the road. They'd all been there to greet him when he'd been released that morning. He'd even prised the kids off his legs for long enough to get Kim in one of the conjugal visit rooms for a desperate, hurried screw before they left, but sex on fancy sheets and helping the kids with their homework on the living room floor was going to have to wait another forty-eight hours. They were put up in a hotel in Knightsbridge for a few days. No sense in getting them too close to danger. He pulled his thin jacket around himself with one hand, trying to keep out the searching, frigid nor'easter of the North Sea.

After three rings, the phone was picked up; being that it was Kim's mobile, he expected she would be the one answering it. But there was clumsy breathing on the line for two seconds, and then a high-pitched, juvenile, "hello...?"

"Emmy, it's Dad," he said, feeling the sides of his mouth stretch from disuse; there was smiling because you were supposed to look pleasant and smiling because you were actually happy, and it had been a while since he'd had any cause for the latter. "'You being good for your mum?"

"Yes."

"Is your brother being good?"

"It's boring here," the seven-year-old opined, which was as good a confirmation as any that her nine-year-old brother was climbing the walls by now and driving Kim insane. The Dolan kids were "free range", used to the woods and meadows of northern Norfolk, Kim's native land. London bewildered them and hedged them in. It wasn't right, the Dolans felt, to raise kids in concrete jungles.

"When can we go home, Dad?"

"Soon, Emmy. Dad just needs to do a job for Mr. Holmes first." Emmy knew that Dad was 'coming home' because of the nice Mr. Holmes, though she had never laid eyes on Sherlock and, Dolan reflected, so far as he knew she didn't really understand that her father had been in _prison_ since she'd been barely three. He paused, listening to her breathing.

"You got a cough," he said, frowning.

"Yeah. It's yucky."

"I bet. You look after it, okay? Is your mum there, sweetheart?"

"She's in the toilet," Emily remarked, just as he heard a distant flush and then a door opening. He chuckled a little to himself as he heard Kim sharply admonish Emily and grab at the phone.

"Eric?"

"Enjoy the toilet?" he teased her.

"I swear, I'll tan her _backside_ if she keeps this sort of thing up."

"Ah, she's just being honest, love. Shouldn't really tan her backside for that, right? Just letting you know I'm okay and I reckon I might finish this job before even Sherlock Holmes expects me to."

"You're being careful?"

"Always, Kim."

"He's dangerous."

"He's kidnapped and tortured some bloke's boyfriend. Reckon that's about as dangerous as they get." To Dolan's way of thinking, he regarded men who dealt in straight, cranial bullet executions to be less dangerous than those who went for ear-chopping and sick phone calls.

There was a tense sort of silence between them for a second or two. In the background, he could hear Daniel doing... something that involved screaming, "Die! DIE!" He hoped it was GI Joe or whatever it was that kids played with these days.

"How've you been feeling?" Kim asked in much gentler tones.

"Don't, Kim. I'm fine," he said, skirting around how tired he felt – his next port of call was going to be the caravan he'd rented at the near-deserted tourist park nearby so that he could sleep. There were times he almost forgot he was terminal, and the last thing he wanted was Kim bringing it up all the bloody time.

* * *

Mycroft Holmes' name literally opened doors but, John reflected, Sherlock Holmes' voice served the same purpose.

Classism, pure and simple – alive and well in 21st century London. John Watson was all too aware of his respectable middle-class decency, and had never been self-conscious about it before meeting Sherlock. He knew that his accent strayed slightly when he was angry or distressed, and of his subconscious lilt while he was working, or around people he didn't know but wanted to impress. Still, he was hardly a _chav_ , and had never felt like one until the spring night three years ago when he and Sherlock had gone to a tapas bar in Soho for dinner after leaving a crime scene. All had gone well until John had called for a cab and was told none were available in the area for forty-five minutes to an hour. Sherlock had silently taken the phone and called the company back. Cab from Poland Street to Baker Street? Ten minutes? Marvellous!

Bastard.

So it was definitely the best idea to give Sherlock the phone, shut up and let him do his posh-voiced thing. He went upstairs instead, to the bedroom that had once been his own and which was now housing Mycroft for the time being. Mycroft had taken his shoes off and stowed them neatly in a pair under the bed, but was sitting on the mattress otherwise fully clothed – jacket, belt, tie and all.

"How's your head?" he asked.

"It's all right." Mycroft rubbed it wearily, flinching a little.

"Haven't had any blurred vision, vomiting, anything like that?"

"No."

"Give me a look..." Mycroft clicked his tongue impatiently as John tilted his head up toward the light for a better look at his eyes. "Bit bloodshot," he remarked. "But it doesn't look like you're getting any worse."

"Of _course_ I'm not."

"Yeah, well. I knew an American soldier who died of cerebral bleeding after being hit on the head. He was only out for ten seconds, and felt fine for the first few days," John remarked guilelessly. He paused; then, seeing Mycroft's expression, he quickly changed the subject.

"Sherlock's tracking down Eliza Doherty now, so we'll be on that this afternoon," he said. "I don't really know what Sherlock wants to do with that, but..." He shrugged. Sherlock always had a plan; too bad he wasn't always diligent about letting those around him know what that plan was. "I think you should try to get some sleep, in the meantime."

"I'm not tired," Mycroft said, as if he was commenting on the weather. Then, almost seamlessly, "you brought Charlotte with you?"

"Uh, yes. But Molly will be over to pick her up in half an hour or so. She's downstairs with her grandmother."

All initial references to Mrs. Hudson as "Grandma Hudson" had been dropped weeks before and now she was just "Grandma", despite Sherlock's frequent protests that one shouldn't address people by names that didn't belong to them. He sincerely disliked the constant "Uncle Sherlock" teasing, and lived in a holy horror of the day that Charlie was old enough to address him as "uncle" for herself. The idea that Mycroft would also be addressed as "Uncle Mycroft", and was even _more_ horrified at the notion, only sweetened that deal slightly.

Mycroft was looking at John in still contemplation, as if the man were an interesting specimen he'd not come across very often. After a few rather uncomfortable seconds, he spoke. "You've always been protective of your loved ones, haven't you?"

"Yes." John did not hesitate.

"Does it never worry you, your family's safety?"

John looked at him in silence for a few seconds, trying to keep a lid on something that had just surged up in his throat. "Mycroft, my family's safety worries me every minute of every day," he was finally able to say.

"So does mine." Mycroft glanced at the floor. "I only bring this up because..."

John gave him a few seconds to formulate a conclusion before realising Mycroft didn't actually have one.

"Yeah, well, thanks for the concern," he said, trying to walk the line between sarcasm and sounding soft. "I'll handle it."

"I sincerely hope so."

There was another awkward silence. John cleared his throat and was about to break it with some meaningless comfort about Eliza Doherty when he was saved from it by his phone ringing in his pocket; with an apologetic glance at Mycroft, he drew it out.

"Hello?"

"Yeah, it's me." 'Me' was Lestrade; by the sounds of things he was in or near traffic. "Sherlock's been ringing me, and now I can't get him to answer the phone. What's going on?"

"Well, I wasn't there, but I think he wanted to tell you that the body wasn't Stephen –"

Mycroft unceremoniously plucked the phone straight out of John's hands and put it to his ear. "Lestrade, get onto your public relations department immediately. I want to give another public statement to the press this evening... yes, I'm absolutely serious... you'll find out when I say it, I imagine. If Paul Doherty thinks he is going to run any more circles around me, I'm afraid he's _very_ much mistaken."

_God, I dread to think what Mycroft's going to do with Doherty once he tracks him down._

Despite the huge number of unsolved kidnapping cases on Scotland Yard's files, it had never once occurred to John that Paul Doherty, his brother and brother-in-law might actually get away with what they'd done. The only anxiety he had was that they could be caught before kidnapping and assault could become kidnapping, assault, and murder. Or worse, kidnapping, assault, murder and suicide.

* * *

 

With a sigh, John left Mycroft with the phone and headed downstairs again to make a much-needed cup of coffee. Sherlock's own smooth bass tones were flowing out from behind his shut bedroom door. He was working his charm on some hapless government employee... or perhaps the highest in the land. Who knew? There were some things about Sherlock's work that he preferred to keep a mystery, and some things John had instinctively realised he couldn't ask about.

From the flat below, he could also hear Mrs. Hudson having a rather one-sided conversation with his small daughter; there was a tinny sort of clinking noise, but he wasn't sure if it was one of Smudge's toys or a rattle. He smiled briefly, then remembered Mycroft's words and put _that_ consideration out of his mind, giving his attention to the kitchen.

An absolute mess – perhaps in all this drama even Mrs. Hudson hadn't had the time or energy to deal with it.

He cleared the fridge of inedible food (most of its contents) and took it to the downstairs bins, being forced to take two different trips. He had no idea what Sherlock was going to be eating for the next few days, but it wasn't going to be leftover Indian takeaway or fruit and eggs that had been there since approximately the first week of November. How Sherlock Holmes hadn't literally killed himself with food poisoning yet was still a complete mystery. Or a miracle, depending on how you viewed it, he reflected, slamming the bin's lid for the second time much more forcefully than necessary.

_Am I seriously cleaning out the fridge when Stephen's being held captive, naked, with his ears cut off?_

As he climbed the stairs back to the flat, he reminded himself that there was absolutely nothing else he could do to help just at that second, and that looking after Sherlock's practical needs so the man could think untethered by considerations like illness or food _was_ helpful to the case. After a bit of creativity he managed to clear and clean half the table, something he knew was going to draw Sherlock's wrath once he noticed. For all the time John had known him, he'd maintained that he wasn't disorganised. He was, he insisted haughtily, one of the most organised people in existence. It wasn't his fault nobody else understood the inner workings of his sock index or why he felt human eyes belonged in the microwave. John had only just made his coffee, and had taken a few sips, when the door flew open and Sherlock stalked out again.

"Bethnal Green," he announced on his way to the coat stand, without even glancing at John. "She's living in government housing; I've got the address. Come on, we haven't got time to spare, John!"

"But... wait... how the hell did you...?"

"Friends in high places." Sherlock knotted his scarf. "Well, when I say 'friends', I mean, 'people who owe me favours.'"

John got reluctantly to his feet, reconciling himself to the fact that his coffee was a lost cause. "You can't just go and knock on someone's door and say, 'hi, you have absolutely no idea who I am, but I got 'round privacy laws to track you down at your house because your estranged jailbird father –'"

"I see absolutely no reason why not," Sherlock interrupted. He sounded casual, but he was pulling his gloves on and looking at John with an inexorable, steely expression; a challenge for John to throw any more cold water on his idea. "Aren't you the one who'd tell me that a man's life is more important than a woman's temporary emotional comfort?"

John reached for his own jacket, which he'd folded neatly over the back of the armchair. _I suppose Charlie will be okay with Mrs. Hudson for half an hour, and Mycroft doesn't need babysitting._ "What's this going to accomplish?" he wanted to know peevishly.

"Everyone has their pressure points," Sherlock told him, and John had an idea that he was once again being purposefully vague. "I'll know more when I meet Eliza for myself. Where's Mycroft?"

"Upstairs. I told him to get some sleep, but last I saw he was on the phone ordering Lestrade around."

"Charlotte?"

John resisted the urge to remind Sherlock that his daughter's name was _Charlie_. For a start, Sherlock would be likely to immediately remind him that the name on his firstborn's birth certificate was, in fact, _Charlotte_. And secondly, his chagrin at being corrected might urge him to revert to calling her _It_ again. Instead, he explained.

"Then I see no reason why we can't leave immediately. Hurry up."


	11. The Gauntlet

_God, I feel like I've been dropped into a plot of The Bill._

23 Carter Street, Bethnal Green, was part of a streetwide warren of Council flats. Hideous buildings, grey and brick-red, with no form of adornment about them; _concrete boxes,_ John reflected in disgust as he trailed after Sherlock through the barren courtyard as he searched for the right staircase that would lead them to flat number 39. Even the awful flat he'd lived in after Sherlock's death, and which was located only two streets away, was an improvement on this place. On top of having a dead mother and a convict father, Eliza Catherine Doherty was also apparently in less than ideal personal circumstances.

The woman who opened the door to them was twenty-one, but she looked thirty-five. She was pale and flabby, dressed in track pants and a faded pink polo shirt; her unkempt hair was in the process of falling out of an awkward pony tail, and though it had once been dyed blonde it was clearly naturally a mousy brown. There were deep shadows under her eyes, and the reason for it was found in the flat behind her: three small children, the oldest maybe six. A fourth, a little older than Charlie, was perched precariously in the crook of Eliza's left arm. All of the children – two girls, a boy, and the baby's gender was difficult to tell – looked scrawny and skittish. But the flat, while smelling like an ashtray, was scrupulously clean and as tidy as the home of small children could be.

"Hello," she said, civil but on her guard. "Can I help you?"

"Sherlock Holmes." Sherlock held his hand out politely to her, but she did not move, and it stuck out between them like an embarrassment. "This is my colleague, Dr. John Watson..."

Years ago, John had asked Sherlock why he insisted on referring to his professional appellation when he introduced him to people, whether it was ever relevant or not. The response had been swift and scathing. _People trust doctors._

"Eliza Doherty, is it?" Sherlock continued, in the brisk, hyper-cheerful way he sometimes used to counteract his usual demeanour.

"Ten years ago," she said, frowning. "Eliza Cunningham. Is this about my dad...?"

"You've heard?" John ventured.

"Of course I've heard. It's all over the news." She glanced behind her, but the children who had milling about watching Dora the Explorer on television when she'd opened the door were now giggling somewhere out of sight; from the squeaking, it seemed they were jumping on a bed. "Look, I'm sorry," she said, and sounded it. "It's awful what happened, but I can't help you. I don't know where he is. If you're from the papers -"

"We already know where he is," Sherlock interrupted, taking her reluctant hand and shaking it anyway. John lifted his head a little, watching as she silently met Sherlock's gaze.

_It's a reflex to shake an offered hand, John, or to accept something passed to you. Never underestimate the observations one can make under those circumstances. You remember what I was able to discern about you from doing something similar._

"And we're not from the papers," Sherlock continued, still disarmingly winsome, though it was clear the pretence would only last so long as it had to. "I'm a consulting detective who's been assigned to the case."

"The police have assigned an _amateur_ to the case?"

Sherlock brushed aside the perceived insult. Eliza Cunningham, formerly Doherty, may not have been the most tactful woman on earth, but she was shrewd, and that was better.

"The kidnapping victim was a friend of my brother Mycroft, Eliza," he said, looking down at her with serious grey eyes. "He was beaten unconscious and mutilated with a razor in the attack."

Eliza looked back over her shoulder to where a little blonde girl had pattered out from the bedroom. She was watching in wide-eyed curiosity, dressed in a grubby purple jumper and threadbare grey leggings, with one shoe on and one slipper. There was a half-eaten piece of toast cradled in her hands.

"Bella, stop eavesdropping," Eliza told her sternly and she startled a little, as if she'd been woken out of a reverie.

"Bored, Mummy," she whined in a thin little voice.

"Well, go away and find something to do." Eliza sighed, shifting the baby in her arms. "I'm _not_ discussing this with you in front of my kids," she said to Sherlock in lower tones. "They see and hear enough violence without me adding to it. And I don't exactly have anywhere to send them where they can't hear us. Not in this place."

Sherlock looked over his shoulder at John, who cleared his throat.

"Nice day outside," he remarked. "I noticed there was a park on the corner."

* * *

"So are you actually going to tell me beforehand what you intend to say?" Lestrade tried, watching as the media once again trooped into the large boardroom at the end of the corridor. He went back to his desk and gathered up a manila envelope containing his notes for the case.

"No, but I'll tell you something else," Mycroft remarked serenely. Despite still-healing bruises and little to no sleep over the past few days, he seemed determined to not present himself as an emotional wreck before the press. Lestrade had noticed the change in him from that morning; less tense, more focused. Instead of fussing with his clothes or watch, he was casually leaning up against the desk and waiting for Lestrade to get himself in order. Lestrade had no idea what to make of the shift in attitude, but he was uneasy about it and didn't know why.

"Oh?" was all he said as he distractedly counted pages.

"While I was sleeping this afternoon," Mycroft said measuredly, "I had a dream. And I'm becoming more and more convinced that it was, in fact, a previously obscured memory." He looked up at Lestrade. "There are people who have an infinite capacity for remembering their dreams, Inspector," he clipped. "And I am not one of them. I do, however, remember this one."

He paused, swallowing almost imperceptibly.

"What was the... the memory?" Lestrade prompted him.

"Teeth marks in a man's hand," he said bluntly. "My own teeth marks, in fact. Felt once, and now seen twice, though I didn't realise it at the time."

"Teeth marks – "

Mycroft stood up straight and glanced over Lestrade's shoulder; the in-session light had just flicked on over the press room doorway. "There's no time to explain now," was his infuriating response, "though you might do some thinking on your own. They're ready."

* * *

"That one's not yours," Sherlock remarked. They'd reached the playground on the corner by this time; a forlorn little square of greyed-over winter grass and plastic play equipment drizzled over liberally with black graffiti. The sun was setting, and the once blue-and-white sky overhead was now flamingo pink; John had tacitly understood his duty to go on ahead with the older children, leaving Sherlock to linger behind with Eliza, who was pushing the baby in his pram. "That one" was the eldest girl, who just then was stomping in an icy puddle while John, with two-year-old Harry by one hand and ragged, four-year-old Bella close by, demonstrated his stellar parenting skills by letting her.

"They're _all_ mine," Eliza said brittly. "Your parents are whoever raised you, not your... physical parents. Those're just donors."

"I see your point," Sherlock said.

"But if you mean Nakesha, no, well. Her dad and me..." She glanced at the pram she was pushing where the baby, wrapped up like an Eskimo, was placidly cooing to himself. She shrugged. "But he's a long time gone, and that's all there is to it, I suppose. I don't treat her any different to Bella and Harry and Jaxon."

"Where's her mother?"

"No idea, but if you ever find her, let me know. I owe her a piece of my mind," she said scathingly. "What's this got to do with anything?"

"Not a great deal," Sherlock conceded calmly. "Though John will be very relieved to find out you had your eldest child at seventeen, not fifteen. This seat is dry."

He sat down gingerly on it as if to prove it, while Eliza struggled to unstrap baby Jaxon from the pram and lift him out. Ahead, and just out of earshot, John was in the process of clipping two-year-old Harry into one of the toddler swings hanging from its wooden frame by sturdy chains.

"Your friend's a natural with kids," Eliza remarked, watching in muffled anxiety. Sherlock snorted.

"His hypervigilance and consideration of every possible negative outcome of a situation is symptomatic of an unhappy childhood and post-traumatic stress disorder. But evidently it improves one's babysitting skills. Don't waste your time," he said. "He's married, and all too likely to remain so, I'm afraid."

"And you...?"

"I'm _not_ a natural with children, and if you don't mind my saying so, yours are the very least of my concerns just now. I need to know about your mother."

Eliza blinked. "My _birth_ mother?"

"Yes. Catherine. Cathy."

"Oh, I... don't know," she struggled, fumbling at her jacket and jumper and latching the fussy baby before Sherlock could even discern what she was doing. Unsure of where to look, he made the split-second decision to glance away.

"What was she like, your mother?" he persisted. Eliza smiled wearily.

"Well, I thought she was the best mother in the world," she said. "But she was very... what do they call them now? Helicopter parents. I wasn't allowed to jump in puddles or climb ladders. She was convinced I was going to do myself in. There was just me, you see."

"Did she suffer from mental illness?"

"She killed herself just before my eleventh birthday, if that's what you mean, but I reckon you probably already know that."

"Did she cut her throat?"

Eliza blinked. "Yes," she said, and there was a little note of strain in her voice. "How did you – "

"That isn't important right now," Sherlock said evenly. "And I must say that's a rather odd suicide method, particularly for a woman."

"I don't know anything about that. But I can promise you that's how she did it."

Sherlock's gaze flickered over the exhausted young mother for a second or two. "You know because you found her," he said quietly.

"Yeah."

"That must have been quite a trauma," Sherlock continued, trying to channel John and wishing for a second he was closer by to take charge of this vessel across perilous waters. If Eliza took offence and stormed off with her children, Stephen Hassell could die. But the woman merely scoffed.

"You _think?"_

"I don't have any personal experience in that area, so I can only _think_ , not _know_." Sherlock's hand twitched toward the coat pocket that housed his cigarettes; then, glancing at baby Jaxon, he evidently thought better of it and dropped his hand. "And it was definitely suicide?"

"She wrote me a note." Eliza sighed and shifted the baby slightly in her arms. "She said in it that she'd never been away from Dad a whole night since they got married, and after he got put away everything she'd done had been wrong, and it was selfish of her to keep on and make me suffer for it."

"Do you still have the letter?"

"God, no. I was a kid – I think the police took it away as evidence."

"She seemed devoted to your father, and vice-versa." Sherlock thought briefly and contemptuously about his own parents and their dysfunctional and far-too-long marriage. Philippa Devereaux-Holmes might have thoroughly enjoyed her post-married life, if she hadn't been buried in clinical depression by that time. "Was your father good to you?"

"Very good to me," Eliza suddenly said warmly. "He might not be a good _man_ , but he was a good father. Like I said, there was just me, and I was a tomboy, so Dad and I were close. Took me fishing with him. We flew kites. Stuff like that. After I was taken into foster care I was forbidden to have any contact with him until I turned eighteen."

"And then?"

"And then by the time I turned eighteen I already had Bella, and no job, and her dad wasn't good to me, and I'd mostly forgotten about what my own dad'd been like, and... look, no, I didn't contact him and haven't since. And now he's done a bunk and kidnapped someone, so I'm not likely to want to follow up, you see. And you're asking a lot of personal questions. Where's all this going, Mr. Holmes?"

"Mr. Holmes is my brother," Sherlock suddenly remarked. "And my brother's evidence helped put your father away all those years ago. After your mother committed suicide, your father blamed Mycroft and for ten years plotted revenge on him when he was released. This is his revenge – on Christmas Night, he and two of your uncles attacked and kidnapped my brother's lover. A day later, they sawed his ears off, and threatened further bodily harm until New Year's Eve, when they plan to slit his throat."

Eliza looked at him. "But you said you know where he is."

"We know where your mother is buried, which seems likely to amount to the same thing. I need your help, Eliza. You don't know me, but I assure you, 'I need your help' is a phrase I've said to exactly six people in my life."

"No. I'm not putting my kids into this."

"You don't need to put your kids into this." Sherlock drew his phone out of his pocket and swiped at the screen. "Though a bit of input there would also be helpful. I need you to give me your memories."

* * *

Mycroft's first press appearance after the kidnapping of Stephen Hassell had been marked by still decorum and an adherence to prompt notes in front of him. As the elder Holmes sat down at the bench before the press cameras, positioned between Donovan and himself, Lestrade noted there were no references or prompts in front of him.

Unscripted conferences were a minefield. Lestrade looked out at the press representatives who had gathered; more than half of them he knew by sight, if not by name, and wasn't pleased to see them. Vultures, most of them. Vultures who'd come to cackle around a body.

With a grim reminder for all comments to be respectful and ethical, Donovan opened the conference. Once he'd been formally introduced Mycroft swiped briefly at his thinning hair for a second, cleared his throat and began without aid.

"This morning," he said evenly, looking out undaunted at the sea of journalists, "I went out to Dartford to identify a corpse found there in the early hours, and which was believed to be that of Stephen Hassell. I'd like to take this opportunity extend a warm thank you to the press members who alerted me to the discovery in such a tactful and compassionate manner."

Lestrade looked down and fidgeted with his watch.

"I can confirm that the corpse was _not_ that of Stephen, who remains missing under a proposed ransom of a million pounds in cash. I have been told he will be murdered on New Year's Eve unless I comply with this ransom.

And now I wish to make a direct appeal to Paul Doherty, the perpetrator of this crime, a man who believes torture and murder is a suitable revenge for my legal duty as a witness against him eleven years ago. Let it be known right now that I do not, nor have I ever, negotiated with terrorists or extortionists. And I do not intend to do so in this case.

I was informed two days ago that Doherty intends to put out Stephen's eyes and castrate him if I don't comply with his absurd, inconsistent, unrealistic and disingenuous demands. And to that I say: Paul Doherty, you are a coward, and you will always be a coward. I have no reason to believe a word you have communicated to me. I say _communicated_ and not _said,_ since your cowardice extends to not using your own voice. It's becoming increasingly obvious that you no longer have Stephen. Even if you do, you've given me no reason to believe you will comply with your own words and not harm him if I do pay ransoms or rush about the country at your whim. You are not only a coward, but a liar.

Your threats against Stephen's safety will do you no good. I will not offer you a penny, no matter what creative injuries you promise next. And rest assured, I will find you and I will make sure you suffer the full weight of the law, whether that be for Stephen's kidnapping and torture, or for his murder. The charges you will be brought under will be entirely up to you and the actions you choose to take.

But for my part, I believe that you are now bluffing and that Stephen is no longer in your hands. Even if he is, I cordially invite you to go to hell." He rose. "I have no more to say at this time. Thank you."


	12. The Bait

"You've been doing your r-research, haven't you?"

Stephen's voice... _Stephen's voice!_ Muffled, wavering, pitched high with fear _(pain?)_ but a live, real voice and not a trick or a pre-recording. Mycroft, standing at the far end of the fourth floor of New Scotland Yard while Lestrade mutely watched, drew in a light breath and mouthed _yes_ to him. It had taken the irrepressibly stupid Paul Doherty less than half an hour after the press conference to take the bait.

"No," was what he said, watching Lestrade rush over to Donovan's vacant desk and whisk up the receiver of her landline extension. Most likely contacting a tech team to trace the call; _useless_ , he thought contemptuously. Doherty was an idiot, but the fact remained that he was at large and probably clever enough to remain that way. Still, if it pleased the police to suppose they were helping...

"No," he said again. "Not research; just a memory of biting your brother Gary and seeing faded teeth marks, _my_ faded teeth marks, on the hand of the corpse you so lovingly left for me to find and identify. When a quick check revealed your brother had no other prior convictions and neither his DNA nor his fingerprints were on file, it all made sense. You really should have cut Gary's hands off too, you know. I can't imagine why you didn't, unless you were begging to be caught."

 _And thank you for being stupid enough to confirm that Stephen's still alive._ Mycroft listened to the man's shaky breathing down the line for a few moments. He'd caught Paul Doherty with nothing to say.

"He wanted to kill Stephen, didn't he?" Mycroft ventured, aware that he'd suddenly stepped out onto the ice, with no idea whether it could bear the weight of his theory. "Your brother Gary. Such a shame that you were the one caught and convicted and put in prison when your brother was easily the more volatile of the two of you. Dear, infuriating Gary, always getting away with everything. I can relate."

He stepped out further onto the ice.

"I recall you arguing about it as I was on the floor with your brother-in-law Brian's boot in my chin," he said. "The words in my fingers were a compromise... a taunt to make you feel manly, but not so stupid that you would kill Stephen or me before the time was up. But Gary wouldn't shut up about that last idea, would he? You're motivated by revenge and have a virtually non-existent moral compass, but Gary is a psychopath who wanted to murder Stephen for amusement. When you suspected he'd try, you killed him instead."

"And it's... g-going to be your b-boyfriend next so y-you shut your mouth and d-do something about it," Stephen got out.

"I do wonder if you've been misdiagnosed after all, if you would decapitate your dead brother to give me a couple of hours of concern, but that's really not the issue here. Paul," Mycroft said reasonably, "why don't you just let Stephen go now?"

Silence, punctuated only by Stephen's breathing.

"You have nothing to gain from killing him," Mycroft went on calmly. "Oh, yes, I suppose you might get some sort of satisfaction at the idea that I'd be sobbing into my pillows at the news. Why don't you ask him about that? Ask him what I forbid him to say the night you attacked him."

"Mycroft-"

" _Shackleton expedition_ ," Mycroft said, so quickly it tumbled out of his mouth as one word. He cleared his throat again.

"Do think about it," he said in his usual clipped tones. "Especially as you have a daughter who won't be able to have _any_ kind of relationship with you if you're dead."

He hung up the phone.

* * *

Eric Dolan was the only tenant of the caravan park, since it was iced over and directly in the middle of the holiday period. The owner, a middle-aged, frowsy woman with a curiously middle-class accent, apparently felt sorry for him. She'd asked him to come over for dinner the night before, and in the grey chill of the morning of the twenty-eighth of December, she invited him over to the gate office again for a pot of coffee and some toast.

This had made Dolan smile to himself. She had no idea he was a convicted felon. Brave lady – or very stupid – inviting her dicey-looking male lodger to eat with her when nobody else was within a five mile radius.

Or perhaps there _was_ someone else. It could have been anything - from mere superstition to being keyed up over sudden freedom and cancer medication - but Dolan had felt the presence of Paul Doherty since arriving at the little windswept bay. Doherty had settled on the picturesque community and poisoned it, like cake dusted with arsenic.

"Have you been doing much drawing, Mr. Dolan?" Mrs Webber suddenly asked in her thin, whining voice as she poured him some bitter black coffee out of a thermis. The cup he held was metal too, sharp edges digging into his fingers as she filled it, making it all a bit like being on some sort of bivouac instead of in a reasonable warm caravan cabin.

Dolan instantly remembered his cover story. In prison, he had had plenty of time on his hands and duly cultivated a natural talent for setting pencil to paper. By this time he was a reasonable enough sketch artist that he could pass as an eccentric who liked to draw the Norfolk coast in midwinter.

"Oh, aye," he said, instantly and enthusiastically. He had – and had the sketches to back up his cover story if he was ever asked to. "I quite like that church down about a mile that way..." he pointed.

"St John's?" she queried vaguely. "Oh, yes, a nice enough church, I suppose. The foundations were laid in 1248 and the north wall dates from early Victorian times..."

"No rector or anything?" Dolan pronounced it as _anyfin._ He sipped again at his coffee. "Only asking 'cause I'd like to go in and have a peep, if I could."

_And ask the rector if he knew the Dohertys._

Mrs. Webber shook her head. "There is one, but he's only there from April to October," she said regretfully. "There're usually no tourists this time of year to preach to, and everyone living in town goes to St. Andrews' or the Christian Worship Centre there. Happy-clappers, you know. Last year the police got called 'cause their revival meetings were disturbing everyone within spitting distance... all the howling and dancing and carrying on they do."

Dolan brushed this aside. It was irrelevant to tracking down his quarry.

"But I did notice someone there in the graveyard, last night," he said carefully. "Standing by one of the graves. Tall bloke, going bald." A tolerable description of Paul Doherty. "Who do you reckon that is?"

"Oh, him," Mrs. Webber said after a reflective pause. "Yes, we do see him about the place sometimes, though I'm sure I don't know who he is or where he comes from."

"He's not local?" Dolan's heart began to sink, but Mrs. Webber shrugged.

"I don't know," she said. "I'm not local myself, and only came here five years ago – had a place near Whitby before. But as for that bloke, I've seen him once or twice in the graveyard there, so he's probably some poor lonely soul with kin buried there."

"When did you first see him there?" Dolan asked her. She frowned, suddenly suspicious.

"A few weeks back," she said guardedly, brushing a fuzzy lock of greying hair behind one ear and looking keenly at him. "Why do you care?"

"Thought he might make a nice subject to sketch, is all." Dolan drained the last of his coffee, thanked her, and stood up.

Now all that remained was taking Doherty in. As he left Mrs. Webber to head up to the church itself, he sent another text to Sherlock.

_definatly doherty here but not seen him for meself yet let u know Mr homes._

* * *

"Congratulations, Mycroft. Our ever-vigilant media consultant has just brought this around." Sherlock strode into the living room at 221B, dressing gown streaming out behind him, and slapped a heavy newspaper down onto the coffee table, before which Mycroft was nursing a wake-up cup of coffee. Glancing over at it, Mycroft could see a photograph of himself labelled in huge black print: _Is This The Worst Man In Britain?_

"Oh, good _Lord_ ," he groaned, picking it up and reading the by-line: _He dared kidnappers to murder his lover._ Sherlock had exasperatedly thrown himself into his own armchair. John, mercifully unaccompanied by his small daughter this time and still wondering whether he should be offended at Sherlock's referring to him as his media consultant, was standing in the doorway uncertainly, arms folded.

"We know it's all lies, Mycroft," he said, trying to be encouraging. "And anyone with a bit of common sense would know it's lies, too. _Nobody_ could make it go for four hours."

Mycroft glanced up at him. "Could make _what_ go for -" He gave a defeated groan of mental pain as the penny dropped.

"Page two," Sherlock said grimly. "Look for the subheading referring to you as a _pervert_. Apparently you've been paying everyone from Nick Clegg to that grubby little man who cleans your office carpet to have sex with you, and the Sun is demanding you be stepped down from all official activities while the matter is investigated."

"I don't care." Mycroft put the paper down and sipped his coffee again.

"You _should_ care. The press are having an absolute field day over your little "kill him and see if I care" press statement, and it's been barely twelve hours. I can only imagine what sort of things they're going to find to pin on you, brother – or more to the point, things they're going to invent. But not to worry," he said in brighter tones. "You do have at least one friend in the press, so far. The Guardian are referring to you as a modern day Oscar Wilde-"

"Oh, shut _up_ , Sherlock!" Mycroft barked, so sharply that Sherlock did shut up. "Your reputation with the press may be a concern for you, but mine is _not,_ and you're getting on my nerves. You of all people should be intelligent enough to work out what I was trying to accomplish last night-"

"You were daring Doherty to 'prove' he still had Stephen by allowing him to talk for him again," Sherlock said promptly. "With a reminder that if Stephen is ever rendered unable to talk, negotiations of any kind are over."

"I'm sick of _negotiations_ , Sherlock." Mycroft put his face in his hands wearily for a second and suddenly, for the very first time in his life, he felt old. Old and very, very tired. "We already know where he is," he said in calmer tones. "And it stands to reason that we seek the kidnapped among the kidnappers. So why in the world isn't anyone doing anything about it?"

"We _don't_ know where he is," Sherlock returned snippily. "If we did, I'd have retrieved Stephen by now. I've got people out looking, and so have the Dartford force and the Norfolk Area Command Unit. I imagine my man will come through first with a confirmed sighting but until that happens we _wait."_

* * *

The stink of brine was particularly strong along the path leading up to the church.

Dolan knew little about history and sociology; he would not have really understood what the last term even meant. But as he hurried along in the dim morning fog, he wondered about the people who had been coming to the church since, so Mrs. Webber said, 1248.

Nice church; nice location. Dolan didn't know it, but it had once been located almost half a mile inland. Over eight centuries the sea had crept up to it, so that gulls and the gurgle of a strong undertow could be heard from the church gate when the wind was in the right direction – and there was always wind. It cried at night and ripped up the sand-hills beyond, and even Dolan's jacket couldn't keep it out.

_The death-day's getting closer. And if he's got this bloke on hand, he'll be thinking about Cathy a lot, I reckon._

He would sooner have been asleep in the humble little bunk back at the caravan, or having a furtive dirty conversation with Kim over the phone, than out in the weather staking out Doherty. Maybe, he reflected, the man had the sense God gave a rabbit and would himself be buried up in bed. But then, he had worked alongside Doherty on many a "project" for many years before he'd been put away.

The trouble with Doherty, he'd always felt, was that he put way too many feelings into his work. Arms trafficking, drugs, what polite people (and neither Dolan nor Doherty were polite people) called _the white slave trade..._ it was all about money, not hurting people. Dolan had put aside the fact that people did get hurt in business, because if you started tallying up every grievance, from the victims' to the guy next to you who thought he didn't get enough say in what happened and how the money was distributed... you'd never stop. Emotions were bad for making money, and Doherty, who'd bitten a woman's face because she'd rolled her eyes at him and thus scarred a profitable prostitute for life, had never been able to contain his.

And now he'd pissed off Mycroft Holmes, a rich genius who had a mysterious career in doing something powerful and who let his head rule his heart so much it'd taken his brother to step in and get him on the case in the first place. Dolan had an idea that you didn't cross either of the Mr. Holmes', especially the older one.

What a world. And Doherty's was about to get really bad, really quickly. Dolan paused on the path to light his cigarette, watching the ancient church looming dark and ghostly in the thick whiteness ahead.

Yes, nice church and all. But not the most pleasant place to traipse out to, especially in the cold. It looked set to be a bright day eventually, but as Dolan put his lighter back in his pocket and continued on the clean, salty fog wrapped itself around the solitary walker like a shroud. It was so thick and close that Dolan never saw peril at his right hand.

* * *

_Found doherty mr holmes st johns graveyard nr eccles-on-sea meet me 8pm 2nite dolan_

Sherlock had been hovering over the singing kettle when the text had come through; for a few seconds he stared at it as the revelation washed over him like a wave. The kettle squealed for attention and he distractedly took it off the hob and sat it on the counter, searing a ring-shaped contact burn onto it in the process and not caring.

He drew a deep breath and snapped his phone back into his pocket. He now knew two things – Paul Doherty had been found, and Eric Dolan was dead.


	13. Firing Line

Molly had come to learn that the time difference between John's return from the bathroom after sex and his falling into an incredibly deep sleep beside her was usually no longer than three minutes, even during the daytime. On a good day, he at least made some effort at sleepy pillow talk before starting to snore; bad days she didn't really mind, because of the good days. But this time, after a trip to the bathroom and a check that Charlie was still in the midst of her midday nap behind the nursery door, he'd got back into bed beside her and seemed far away in thought. One finger traced a lazy pattern over her hip.

She smiled to herself for a few seconds, glancing up at the ceiling, where leaf silhouettes in shades of emerald quivered. Midday, not because they were being a little more adventurous than usual, but because this was the time they were least likely to be interrupted by Charlie or the cats...

"What are you thinking about?" she asked softly.

He came back to earth, taking a deep breath. "Something that isn't really pillow talk, Molly."

She sat up, deciding not to remind him of his own moratorium on discussing murders, kidnapping, rape or terrorism before, during or after sex. John didn't often like to be reminded of his own "rules."

"You know you can tell me." She ruffled her fingers through his hair for a second, waiting. For a few moments she wondered if John had even heard her.

"Mycroft is one of the most capable people I've ever known – mentally, physically, all of it," he finally said, letting out a breath. "And he was knocked out, while his partner was attacked and tortured and kidnapped. It could happen to anyone. I got knocked out at my front _door_ once."

She was silent, waiting for his thoughts to unravel.

"So there's Mycroft - capable, brilliant Mycroft - and he can't do anything to help Stephen, and it _happens_ , Molly. He was caught off guard. It... might not have happened if he'd had a weapon nearby."

She was looking at him in increasing consternation as his meaning dawned on her.

"You mean a _firearm."_

"Yes, I mean a firearm. I want you to learn how to use the gun."

"No," she exclaimed. "No. You know I hate guns. You know I hate _that_ gun..." Her gaze strayed to the second drawer in the beside table beside John. While the gun was still being housed there, she had never really agreed with that, and had given her husband a gentle ultimatum only a few weeks before: he had until Charlie's six-month birthday to find a new home for it, magazine dismantled, in a proper gun closet or a locked strongbox. She had no intention of finding out their increasingly-mobile daughter could reach and open that drawer when she actually did one day.

"You've got damn good reason to be grateful for it. It saved my life more than once," John reminded her quietly. "And might save yours one day."

She pursed her lips and shook her head violently, as stubborn as a child. "I can't, John. I'm not like you. I could never shoot at someone -"

"Whoa, hang on," he said heatedly. "I hope you're not implying I've shot at people for _kicks_."

"No, I –"

"Molly, in the time I've known Sherlock, and _because_ I've known Sherlock, I've been held at gunpoint too many times to count, beaten solid six times, kidnapped twice, knocked out four times, had an empty magazine fired at my head point _blank_ , narrowly avoided the CIA executing me while I knelt on the floor, was strapped to bloody _explosives,_ and shot in the chest. It happened to me because people wanted to hurt Sherlock, and did it ever occur to you that anyone who wanted to hurt _me_ could – "

He paused and swallowed.

"You say you couldn't shoot at someone," he went on calmly. "So tell me. Would you sooner shoot someone, or let them hurt Charlie?"

Molly's mouth dropped open. "John! That is _not_ a fair question!"

"It's a perfectly fair question, because God forbid it ever happen but it _might._ Which would you prefer? Would you protect your family if you had to? Because let me tell you one thing – I would shoot _anyone_ to protect my family, and I'm not about to be sorry for it, either."

"I'm not _asking_ you to be sorry for it." She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again. "And you know I would do anything to protect Charlie," she said in a wavering voice.

John's conscience twinged painfully. _Jesus_. She was going to burst into tears because he'd yelled at her. Pretty sure they hadn't sanctioned _that_ one in marriage counselling.

"And that includes firing the gun at a person if you absolutely had to?" he persisted, trying to watch his tone. "If you really had no other way of stopping them?"

She took a hitched breath, but the tears weren't flowing; not yet, anyhow. "I would do anything to protect Charlie," she repeated obstinately.

"Okay, I'll take that as a 'yes.'" He scrubbed one hand over his face in tired resignation. Well, he'd got that much out of her, at least. It was a start. "So if you ever _have to_ fire that gun to defend Charlie, or yourself... or me... then I want you to know what you're doing. It's not as easy as it looks. You don't just point it at something and pull the trigger. Guns really can be dangerous if you don't know anything about them. I don't want you to take up target shooting as a hobby and join a gun club or anything, Molly. As a matter of fact, once I know you can defend yourself, I hope you never have to pick up a gun again."

She glanced toward the bedroom drawer and put her palm on her forehead for a second. "So do I," she said weakly.

In the nursery, Charlie had started to fuss; Molly got up and hastily slipped last-night's nightie on.

"I wasn't joking about you finding a safe place for the gun, John," she said softly as she went across the hall and opened the nursery door. As she went over to the cradle to lift Charlie out, she heard John swear to himself under his breath and get up to shuffle into his jeans.

 _Well, that wasn't quite as romantic as I'd hoped,_ she reflected dully to herself, putting Charlie on the change table and unclipping her little flannel suit. _And neither is this._

She really couldn't fault John on that one. He had never balked at his fair turn at changing nappies and cleaning up sick. She'd just clipped Charlie back into her suit and lifted her in her arms when she heard a vague sort of scraping noise in the bedroom, then a pause, and John's voice floated out to her.

"Okay, Molly," he said distractedly. "Where is it?"

She frowned and went back into the bedroom, where she found John hovering over the contents of the second drawer – passport, medal, dog-tags... and empty space where the pistol usually sat.

"I don't know where it is," she blurted out. "I didn't do anything with it."

"Molly, this is really, _really serious..."_

"I haven't _touched it,_ John!"

"It _had_ to be you," he protested, his tone as taut as a violin string. "Because it wasn't me, and the gun is missing and it didn't just bloody walk off by itself. Who else could have taken it? Charlie? Toby? I-"

He looked at her in dread for a second while he called to mind who owned spare keys to the house. Mrs Hudson, and...

"Oh, my God..."

John rushed down the staircase to the kitchen, swiping his phone off the bench and scrabbling at the menu for Sherlock's number.

* * *

_My train left Liverpool Street Stn fifteen minutes ago. I'll reach Norwich by three and hire a c_

Sherlock, tweed coat bunched up awkwardly into his lap and out of the way of the woman sitting closest to the window, blinked slightly as the phone in his hand started to ring.

Well, it had always been a matter of time as to when John was going to realise the gun was missing. Sherlock had fondly hoped he'd be able to finish this without his interference at all, but at least he had a good head start. There was nothing for it. Standing up and making his way down the aisle to the toilets, he flicked his phone screen and opened the call. "What do you want?"

"Please, for the love of _Christ_ will you tell me you have the gun!"

"Naturally," he said calmly, in a perfect imitation of Mycroft. "Suspecting it may come in handy, I've had it for the past thirty hours..."

The train snaked around a heavy bend and Sherlock, already slightly unbalanced with the weight of the Browning in his trouser pocket, swayed almost directly into an elderly lady napping in her chair to his right. "Sorry," he muttered as she opened her eyes and glared at him. He reached the toilet and enclosed himself inside, wrinkling his sensitive canine nose at the reek of urine and cigarettes around him. On the other end of the line, John was silent, as if still taking it all in.

"I'm changing the locks," was all he could get out. "I'm changing the locks and so help me God, I am _never_ trusting you with a key to my house again."

Sherlock, recognising his tone, wondered in mild concern whether John was seconds away from taking out his frustration on a nearby wall. "It was necessary," he insisted.

"It was _necessary_ that you steal a loaded firearm from me...? Jesus, Sherlock, what the hell are you doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing?"

There was another icy pause down the line for a few moments as this sunk in.

"Tell me where you are," John demanded.

"No."

"I can hear that you're on a train; I'm not stupid. I swear I will examine footage from every Tube station in London if I have to. Tell me where you are."

"I said _no,_ John. And anyway, you won't have time for that. It will be over by then. Just stay where you are and trust me -"

"You promised me, Sherlock," John said suddenly.

Sherlock frowned. "I promised you _what?"_

"After you watched me lying in a hospital bed with a bloody great drainage tube sticking out of my chest for six weeks you promised me you would _never do this to me again_. You promised you'd never pull this mysterious act and wander off to meet with a psychopath on your own and get yourself killed. You promised you'd let me know if you were ever in danger like that again. Are you seriously telling me that that was all a lie?"

Sherlock, clutching the grubby sink for support, was silent for a few seconds. His throat had suddenly constricted in an odd way.

"Okay. I sent Eric Dolan out to scout for Paul Doherty," he finally said in a low rush. "I didn't tell you because Mycroft had rejected his help and he needed to work without restriction. He located Doherty in a churchyard just outside of Eccles-on-Sea, Norfolk. I got a text from him confirming it a few hours ago, but it wasn't him. Dolan can't write a sentence without misspelling half the words and he always writes _Holmes_ without the "l" and this time he _didn't,_ John. This time he spelled it correctly."

Behind the door there were distant shuffling footsteps and the train brakes squealed a little.

"You think Paul Doherty sent you that text."

"Yes."

"Pretending to be Dolan, who's probably dead."

"Almost certainly."

"So you're telling me that after stealing from me and lying to me you're now walking into a bloody trap with a psychopath we know _sawed his own brother's head off just to mess with Mycroft for an hour or two._ Is that what you're telling me?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to protest; to his own surprise, nothing meaningful came out.

"I'm coming out to you, Sherlock – don't interrupt me and don't even _think_ of arguing. Eccles-on-Sea, did you say? I bet we could get there by car quicker than you could by train, even if you did get a head start. Where did you say you'd meet him?"

Sherlock floundered for a second or two.

"St. John's churchyard," he muttered. "At eight o'clock this evening, so you'll have plenty of time to get there. I ask for three things, John. Three. Things."

"Fine, what?"

"Now that you know the time and place, you don't contact me again. For all I know my phone is tapped already, and from the second I arrive in the area he and Brian Merchant are going to be watching me. I left Mycroft asleep at Baker Street; given the sleeping pill I gave him, he'll be out for a few hours. He doesn't come with you, nor does he even know about it. I don't care what lie you tell him but you are _not_ going to make my brother watch if Doherty shoots me or cuts Stephen's throat a few days early for spite."

There was a brief pause down the line. "Okay."

"And since I know you're going straight to Lestrade, tell him if he brings a firearms unit or a squad down with you, Doherty is going to kill me. He'll kill me. Understood?"

"Yes."

Sherlock hung up.


	14. Mr. Holmes

It had been a clear, almost blindingly bright winter's afternoon when Sherlock arrived in Norwich to pick up a hire care from the train station and make the rest of the journey to St John's churchyard by road. Warm for winter; as he drove through Rackheath, Wroxham and Hoveton his eyes darted warily to and from children playing in the streets, bundled up in jumpers and coats and scarves and gloves but able to venture forward to play under the chill sun. _New bikes. Of course. Christmas presents._

The road stretched on ever eastwards with little in the way of bends or turns or corners; only the scenery changed, the modern concrete buildings and roads of populous Norwich giving way to little low-eaved cottages, their thatching slumped under four hundred years. Walled waterways gave unto little marshy rivers and winding tributaries, sparkling under the winter sun and even at this time of year festooned with colourful sailing boats and broad, long, sombre canal vessels; beyond and to the north were the fens, with their dark secrets. As Sherlock travelled through Wayford he glanced to his left at the still water of the now-disused canal.

_Was it here? It had to have been somewhere near here..._

He had been the summer of his sixth birthday, and Mummy had crawled out from under her depression for long enough to apologetically propose a family holiday. Sherlock had an idea that he had innocently asked it: _will Dad be coming with us, too?_ and that Mycroft had told him to shut up, but in the thirty years since he didn't know if this had ever really happened. Giving in as she so rarely did for her youngest child's love of all things locomotive, Mummy had agreed to a canal ride. But she hadn't seemed to be enjoying it much, sitting passively on the starboard side with a cup of tea in her worn, veined hands. In Sherlock's memory, she still wore her engagement and wedding rings that day, though he again considered this was probably the manufactured memory of a six year old who couldn't comprehend the difference between a father who was overseas eight months of the year for work and a father who now lived in Hong Kong with his girlfriend.

What was definitely _not_ an invented memory was when, after fifteen or twenty minutes of prowling the deck in a flurry of excited, joyful movement, Sherlock had caught a glimpse of something that had briefly flickered on the brown silted water of the canal and then was gone. A fish, or an eel perhaps; perhaps it had been something more sinister. Either way, Sherlock had scrabbled up the barrier and precariously over the side to see it better.

For a few seconds there was a gentle sloshing noise as the canal boat sliced through the water, the purr of little breezes playing in the marsh grasses beyond and the anxious pips of a moorhen nearby seeking her chicks.

And then a sudden flurry of sound and movement; he lost his balance and pitched forward, his spindly little arms totally unable to take his own weight. A gasp and a heart-thud, echoed by a very external one when he was suddenly flung back onto the deck and landed painfully on both elbows. He had looked up in astonishment to find Mycroft – Mycroft who he thought so grown up, Mycroft who was sixteen and still at school – standing over him. And then Mycroft had pulled him to his feet and slapped him.

"Don't ever do that again!" he got out, in a voice Sherlock only ever remembered as _strangled._ "Do you want to drown? Can't we even have a family holiday without you doing something to ruin it?"

Sherlock had been every day of twenty before he was able to ease the stinger out of that memory; the thought that if he _had_ drowned, all Mycroft or Mummy would have cared about was their ruined holiday. And it was a full decade longer before he'd fully realised that, even in that moment of anger, Mycroft hadn't given a damn about the holiday.

But for the rest of his life he felt sad when he heard the solemn canticle of frogs or the chirrup of a moorhen, and did not know why.

* * *

Sherlock hadn't factored in the fog.

It had still been a fine sunset when he had finally arrived at Eccles-on-Sea and parked the car in a carpark meant to service the local rowing club and which, like every building or public facility he'd seen for ten miles, seemed to be abandoned to the cold. But as Sherlock sat and smoked in silence, the fiery orange of the sky overhead deepened into rose, then magenta and violet. And then the fog, rolling in from the sea with surprising swiftness and enveloping the car like a silent killer.

There were hours to burn, and little beside the contents of his own head to burn them with. His phone was too important to play around with. The car radio? Talkback was full of idiots and he found most "modern music" excruciating; on investigation he found that the remote seaside location only picked up two channels, and both were horrible.

So much for that.

Sherlock had distractedly bought some very random food while awaiting the hire car in Norwich. But the sandwich - _I don't even know if that's chicken or turkey –_ and chocolate bar had been sitting on the passenger seat since, forgotten. He deliberated for a few moments, picking at the wax paper the sandwich was wrapped in. He didn't eat while working. He _never_ ate while working. Digestion, he firmly believed, slowed him down.

But he hadn't eaten for three days, and he was hungry. And John, John who was on his way to help and probably in the area already, would want him to eat.

It was a capitulation to his base physical needs, one he was ashamed of. But Sherlock admitted to himself later that quite possibly, deciding to eat and drink that evening saved his life.

* * *

Sherlock flicked the light on his wristwatch briefly as he fumbled at the church gate and passed through, the creak and clank echoing out into the darkness as a challenge _: I am here._

Six minutes to eight. It had taken him an hour to walk a mile in the dark. Visibility in the heavy fog was at only a few feet, and he had only the continuation of the road in front of him as guidance until he made out the church wall to his left and was able to search along it for the gate. He hadn't dared bring the car any closer. Doherty would consider that a challenge; he was probably already in the churchyard.

And so was John.

John was obsessively ten minutes early for everything.

Sherlock dug one chilled hand into his pocket for his cigarettes, knuckles brushing against the Browning for a second as he did so. He drew out one of only two remaining cigarettes – it had been a long time since he'd smoked so much – and furtively lit up, smoking in silence for a minute or two before he heard soft but purposeful footsteps away to his left. He looked up, alert, and snaked his hand back into his pocket for the gun. But he could make nothing out in the fog and darkness except that there were two walkers, and neither of them were John.

"I don't bring a knife to a gunfight, Mr. Holmes," someone rasped as two figures loomed out of the fog, suddenly close.

Paul Doherty and Brian Merchant.

Sherlock knew both men by their photographs. But Doherty's had been four years old and Merchant's even older, and neither really spoke to each man's physicality. Both tall; Doherty was a lean six foot two, and Merchant towered over both of them, barrel-chested and, Sherlock suspected, dim-witted. It was Doherty who had spoken and Doherty who held a gun in his right hand. Sherlock, glancing at it, curled his own fingers around the Browning.

"Neither do I," he said, raising it.

At his voice, Doherty startled; then he took another step closer without brandishing his own gun. Sherlock, standing his ground, realised he had moved forward to observe him, not threaten him.

Paul Doherty was looking at Sherlock Holmes as if he had never seen the man before in his life, because he hadn't.

Sherlock's lip twitched as he realised. "You were expecting my brother."

And then, the situation tumbled out before Sherlock's mental eye and quickly sharpened into clarity. Mr. Holmes. _He_ was Mr. Holmes, the younger, and the only evidence he had that Paul Doherty even knew he existed was a throwaway reference Eric Dolan had made: Doherty had briefly considered kidnapping and torturing _him_ to "mess up" Mycroft but had abandoned it in favour of using Stephen instead.

Eric Dolan had only ever called him _Mr. Holmes_ ; or, more correctly, _Mr Homes._ Dolan had been instructed to delete Sherlock's texts once they had been read, the ones signed clearly as _SH;_ but Sherlock was willing to be every penny he had that Dolan hadn't thought to delete his own messages _to_ him from the outbox.

If Paul Doherty's knowledge of their relationship was entirely derived from texts in Dolan's outbox, he would have no way of telling that Dolan's sponsor had not been Mycroft, and that Mycroft was not the Mr. Holmes who had challenged him.

"Sherlock Holmes," he said calmly, by way of introduction. "Forgive me if I don't shake your hand, but under the circumstances, I don't think it's a very good idea. I'm sorry that Mycroft is unavailable. Still recovering from those injuries you gave him, and he does like to outsource."

"I have no business with you, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock could hear the rattle in Paul Doherty's lungs. _Heavy chain smoker. The fog is difficult for him._

"You really should check these things," he said, trying to modulate enough disdain to annoy Doherty but not enough to get himself shot. "Not a good time or place for you to remember that there's more than one Mr. Holmes - which the world should be grateful for. And I'm afraid I have business with _you_ , so since we've both made the effort to come out here, we may as well address it. I assume you've murdered Eric Dolan, but I'd quite like to know where Stephen Hassell is."

Doherty's upper lip curled when he spoke, revealing his long front teeth. "You seem to think I didn't kill Stephen too," he said.

"So you _did_ murder Dolan. Thank you for confessing to that," Sherlock said calmly, tapping the gun with one finger as if to remind Doherty he still held it. Shooting would be a mistake. He could not guarantee Merchant wasn't also armed. "As for thinking you didn't kill Stephen, you just told me you haven't. You're a lot more clever when you don't have to think on your feet and can force some lowly government peon to do your talking for you. Where is he?"

A ripple of outrage had passed over Doherty's face when he realised the insult; but he clenched his jaw and then relaxed it, chuckling. "What, you think I'm going to give you directions, take you there, when I can just shoot you now?"

"I'm not holding a novelty lighter," Sherlock said grimly.

"Neither am I, but I also brought backup." Doherty glanced at Merchant for a second.

In the gloominess behind them there was a furtive but purposeful rustle. If Paul Doherty had had Sherlock Holmes' keen ears and intellect, he would have realised the sound was a deliberate one made by a human being; one located over thirty feet away. Sherlock glanced over Doherty's shoulder, even though he couldn't see five feet in that direction; it helped the ruse that he had no idea what it was either.

"What the hell is that?" Doherty demanded of Merchant, without taking his eyes off his adversary. "Bring a bit of backup of your own, did you, Sherlock Holmes?"

Sherlock looked back at him guilelessly. "Doherty, you've had me watched since I arrived," he said. "You know everything I've said and done for hours. You probably know what radio station I listened to for five minutes in the car. You know entirely well that I came alone."

The rustle was repeated. Doherty turned to Merchant. "Go and fucking _look!"_

Merchant disappeared into the darkness, and Sherlock dropped his shoulders into a relaxed position but otherwise was still, waiting.

_Shoot him now!_

But the pistol sat impotent and snug in his right hand as he listened to Merchant's footsteps leading away, first heavy, quick and purposeful; now slow and hesitant, as if he were trying to find his way. The soft rustling had now ceased.

Then Sherlock heard the distant cry of a moorhen. But it wasn't a moorhen; it was an ambushed Brian Merchant hitting the frozen dirt face-first and crying out in alarm for half a second before he was silenced. Instinctively, Sherlock had glanced over Doherty's shoulder again for a second, and that was his own mistake.

Doherty lunged for his hand that held the gun, his full weight behind him. Vice-like fingers pushed the weak spot of Sherlock's hand between the thumb and index finger, twisting his arm roughly against his own torso. Sherlock grunted, breathless in shock, and threw himself forward, instead of giving into the instinct to pull back and get out of the way. Doherty lurched back and Sherlock may have gained the upper hand by throwing him off his balance, but for Doherty's grip on him suddenly changing directions.

There was a sickening, audible _pop_ as Sherlock's thumb and forearm bones snapped.

He gave an involuntarily cry of pain and dropped to the frozen ground, sprawling headlong and clutching his shattered arm. For three seconds there was nothing except fog and agony, and then the darkness fell.


	15. Taken

"Where the hell did they go? Where?!"

Lestrade, his incapacitated quarry slumped face-first in the dirt beside him, hands cuffed behind, heard John before he abruptly materialised out of the fog.

They'd split up on arrival half an hour before and hidden the two squad cars in the lane behind the churchyard, so heavily encased in winter marsh grass and fog they would be invisible unless you knew where to find them. Lestrade had posted Donovan and Halloran at the eastern gate and positioned himself on the western side, taking cover both in the fog and in the dark shadow of a huge draped stone urn epitaph; John had disappeared into the fog toward the north side of the church. All of them had heard Sherlock's cry and a series of thumps, followed by quick but lumbering footsteps. John, if he'd known it, had reached the exact spot where Sherlock had been standing first; but Sherlock was no longer there, and so he'd blundered in the direction he'd last heard Lestrade's voice until he could make him out.

John looked down at the felled man by Lestrade's side. "Greg, where the hell is Sherlock?!"

Lestrade lifted his radio. "Guys, we have one of the suspects loose somewhere and he may have Sherlock. Do you copy?"

There was a short burst of static and John heard a meaningless blur of calm response from Halloran.

"Right. Get yourself back here. Now," Lestrade barked into the radio. "It's pointless running around in the fog like this. Keep cover on your way and shoot if you have to. Donovan?"

Another distorted burst of static as Halloran confirmed he copied, but there was no response from Sally Donovan.

* * *

Sherlock stirred slightly. He was dangling loosely over someone's shoulder,

_(Mycroft?)_

his legs hanging freely and pulling him down.

_(Mycroft, leave me alone, I can walk to bed)_

Close to his ear, someone was puffing a little for breath; he was jolted up and down painfully by the impact of their steps as they ran. He opened his eyes a crack, but could see very little; it was dark and cold, and he could see feet moving up and down just inside his range of sight. And he thought then that they looked like horses' hooves clomping up and down; he thought of pony rides in Hampshire and polo matches at Evenden College.

_(half a league, half a league, half a league onward...)_

A sudden and much more violent jolt. Like a steeplechase? A burst of pain supernovaed across Sherlock's chest. He gasped and tried to lift his head to fill his lungs.

_(all in the valley of death...)_

* * *

"Donovan...!" Lestrade all but roared into the radio.

Over John's shoulder they heard a sudden cry, but it wasn't one of fear. Then a dull thud and the slap of shoes running full pelt on the road outside.

A shot rang out and then, before anyone could react to it, another.

"Oh, my God!"

As John dashed off in the direction of the road there was another, much more distant series of sounds; a car door opening and closing twice, and the rev of an engine, followed by a squeal of tyres as a car roared off into the distance. By the time John spilled out onto the road it was empty except for Donovan, the patches of fog so thick there that he nearly tripped over the kneeling woman before he saw her. One hand cupped the right side of her face and as he ran to her, he saw blood ooze from between her fingers.

"Jesus, what happened? Are you – "

"Went north," she got out. "Got into a silver van. Got the plate number."

"Sally, back up, you've been shot – "

"He missed," she insisted dully, having not yet registered the blood on her grazed ear. "Sherlock's in the back seat. I don't think he's dead."

* * *

With immense effort, Sherlock forced his eyes open slightly, viewing the world around him through his eyelashes. Cold. Very cold, but very still, and the fog was no longer kissing his cheeks and slipping seductive, icy fingers inside his coat and scarf.

It was a full minute of blank staring before he realised he was looking at the back of a car seat.

Like a striking cobra, he whipped his good arm out to the door handle, but found it locked fast. The van swerved violently and slammed him up against it as he fumbled desperately for the internal lock; fighting screaming agony in his right arm and fingers as he did. There was a shrill squeal of tyres as the car fishtailed on the icy road and finally spun at one hundred and eighty degrees and came to rest. Sherlock was thrown forward into the back of the seat, his bad arm smashed audibly against it. He heard the cry that followed, without understanding that he had been the one who had made it.

Stillness for a second. Then a low curse. A door slammed and another rattled open, and Sherlock found himself roughly dragged out onto the road by his feet. Stars burst in front of his eyes as the back of his head smacked the road.

Several hundred feet away a Mr. and Mrs. Byatt, sitting relaxing in their sitting room after dinner, heard the tyre squeals and door slams. That was nothing really unusual – icy road, easy for a driver to lose control on that stretch. Their only notion that something might have been really wrong was when a hoarse male cry, muffled by the fog, drifted across the fields between the house and the road. It was the shout for help Sherlock Holmes made just before he was silenced.

* * *

"Sir - !"

Donovan sounded girlish when she raised her voice in alarm. By the time John had brought her back to Lestrade, they'd found him interrogating Brian Merchant by kicking him half senseless.

"Where the fuck has he taken him?" he growled.

"I don't know – Jesus!" Merchant squealed breathlessly as Lestrade's boot crashed into his sternum. He rolled over as best he could and drew in a breath before the DI kicked him again.

This was wrong. This was _wrong!_ This wasn't what being a police officer was supposed to be about! Every instinct she had screamed against it. You didn't beat suspects up. You stuck them in an interview room and you grilled them, played games with them, even _lied_ to them, but you didn't _beat them up._

But while John had been standing with Donovan in the road, hastily evaluating the wound on her ear, DI Alec MacDonald of the Yard had already arrived in the churchyard. He'd been first on the spot when Lestrade had radioed the backup units he'd had distributed nearby. He was a man nearing retirement who usually headed up the Camden command unit and had happened to be in the office when John had called in that afternoon and Lestrade had appealed to every officer he trusted for help. The older officer stood by, arms crossed, doing nothing. And that bloody kiss-arse Chris Halloran who was so desperate for her job, he wasn't doing anything to stop Lestrade either.

Pressing a wet antiseptic towelette that John had given her to her stinging ear, she had a sudden memory of one of the first cases she had worked on with Lestrade after he'd been promoted and brought in. Jennie Earl. A fifteen-year-old girl who'd been kidnapped and then murdered. The suspect – she'd completely forgotten his name – had been tried and convicted; the police considered it a good result, but DI Lestrade didn't. After hearing the news, she'd heard him mutter something dark about how he'd had senior officers in Bristol when he was much younger who would never have allowed that bastard to live long enough to see the inside of a courtroom in the first place.

And now all those evenings watching _Life on Mars_ DVDs with Jeff Anderson and sniggering at the idea that any officer would _really_ beat the shit out of a suspect were becoming a lot less funny.

"Sir, stop, you can't – "

"Shut it, Donovan. This bastard's got _Sherlock_ and his friend here is going to _bloody tell me where he's taken him!"_

"I don't know where," Merchant gasped, a wavering sound that tapered off into a whimper.

"Where's he got Stephen, then?"

"I don't _know_ , he didn't tell me, I've been bunking in Lessingham – _augh!"_

"For God's sake, Greg, he can't talk if you keep kicking him!" John charged in, shoving Lestrade back by one shoulder so hard that the taller man staggered slightly. "Cut it out and let him talk!"

John Watson was being the voice of _reason_ , and that was possibly the most worrying thing of all to Sally Donovan.

Leaving Merchant in the dubious custody of Inspector MacDonald, John marched Lestrade through the fog – now starting to lift in odd drifts here and there – stumbling through the thick winter grass on the far bank of the church before they finally found the squad cars hidden in the lane behind. Donovan, uninvited and unhindered, followed behind.

"Where did you leave the others?" John demanded, throwing the squad car door open and practically forcing Lestrade down into the seat. After a dazed second, Lestrade looked up at him as if he were only just now remembering that there _were_ others.

"Road blockades," he mumbled. He dropped his forehead into the back of the seat and exhaled. "I've got Bradstreet, Hopkins and Merivale with teams posted at the corners of Church Lane, Bush Drive and Beach Road."

John looked at him like he was desperately trying to reason with a complete idiot. "Right, Greg, well I don't have a map of the place in my head so just _tell_ me – "

"That covers all three sides," Donovan broke in. "There's only three roads in or out of here, so if he takes Sherlock outside of two miles of here he'll be pulled over. Unless he can swim." She turned her head toward the east, where the North Sea was roaring over the sand dunes.

"Well, what if he doesn't _use_ the road?!"

"Then he won't get very far in the mud," Lestrade said wearily. Now that Merchant was out of sight and kicking distance he was regrouping quickly and focusing on the facts and details, his usual method of work. "Or the fog, for that matter. Even if he ditches the car and heads toward Hempstead on foot, he won't get far, especially if he's got Sherlock with him."

Donovan saw John swallow heavily and suddenly, she understood the effort he was making to not just run off into the fog along the road she'd last seen the car. "We'll get him, John. We will."

* * *

The first thing Sherlock registered was the pain.

_Reel'd from the sabre stroke_

It burned like a ball of flame engulfing the entire of his right arm; as he moved it slightly, it intensified so violently that he gasped and was plunged head-first into consciousness. Another attempt to move his arm, and this time he understood – it was broken, twisted up behind his back, wrists bound together by what felt like duct tape. He moved his aching legs slightly. Duct tape. Tried to open his mouth. Duct tape.

The floor beneath him was stone-cold and the room dark, but close enough that even in his compromised state of consciousness he was able to tell that there was a roof over his head. He shut his eyes tightly and tried to remember what had happened and use his other senses to determine where he was.

_Salt and brine. Wind. Ocean. Gulls._

He opened his eyes again but did not move, sending out little sensory feelers that would signify the presence of anyone else in the room. He listened to his own ragged breathing for a few minutes, drawing it in and out rhythmically, feeling his heart thud and his chest rise and fall.

Drawing in another slow breath, he held it. At first there was nothing but wind rattling the roof _(tin roof)_ and the dull roar of the North Sea. But just as his lungs started to ache, he heard it – someone else in the room was breathing, too.

And they were breathing with difficulty, though this wasn't Paul Doherty's smoker's wheeze. This was something more sinister. Sherlock turned his head, grey eyes straining in the darkness in the direction of the sound.

The man on the other side of the large room _(tin roof! Had to be important-)_ was lying straight and stiff, plumb against the wall like a discarded dressmaker's mannequin. Head of dark hair that could have belonged to anyone. But as Sherlock looked further, there was no doubt about it. Stephen really had been kidnapped without a stitch of clothing on, and Merchant and Doherty hadn't provided him with any.

Sherlock paused, listening for noises beyond the wind and the gulls and Stephen's breathing. And only when he was absolutely convinced that the building he was being held in was empty, he awkwardly rolled onto the shoulder of his good arm and tried to kneel.

The pain pulled him sideways and dragged his jaw open, wrenching out a strangled little cry. He braced up, breathing slowly through his nose; the pain in his broken arm didn't abate, but he set about tolerating it and, propped up awkwardly on his good one, managed to drag himself over to Stephen. He put his fingers on Stephen's shoulder, felt the cold waxiness of his skin and the shudder as he breathed. His hands and feet, too, were bound. He gave a sharp little groan of protest through the duct tape covering his mouth.

_Hypothermic... might die..._

In the dimness, Sherlock thought he could make out red smears where Stephen's ears should have been.

Sherlock thought fuzzily of the last time he'd been shattered like this, when his appendix had ruptured. Then, he'd had the luxury of lying groaning on a clean hospital mattress, being able to concentrate purely on how much it hurt; John had been there, making phone calls and hurrying along hospital staff and making sure everything was going to be fine, just fine.

John wasn't here.

Here was only inky blackness and pitiless cold and a seriously ill man slumped beside him in the corner, as silent as a grave. And Sherlock knew it as well as he knew his own name: if he let the pain in his arm overwhelm him and send him stupid, he was going to die.


	16. Endurance

"Wake up, sunshine."

 _Sunshine._ Lestrade occasionally called Sherlock S _unshine_ when he was trying to irritate him, but there was no sunshine here, and this wasn't Lestrade. Sherlock was jolted into full consciousness when someone pulled roughly on both shoulders. His injured arm clunked audibly and he bit on the urge to scream, screwing his eyes shut and trying to breathe through his nose. The salty air around him was cloying and he wondered if his nose was full of dried blood. Paul Doherty was bending over him, eyes gleaming in the darkness; he was so close that Sherlock felt the man's sour breath on his face.

His gaze flickered to the suspicious bulge at Doherty's right hip.

_The gun. John's, not his own._

There was absolutely no chance of making a sudden grab for it, Sherlock realised dully. Even if his right arm hadn't been shattered, his wrists and ankles were still taped. And he wasn't sure if he was able to walk, let alone escape the... where was he? Tin roof. Ocean. Big draughty building with a concrete floor...

He had no idea how long he'd been senseless for after being taken, and if he were still anywhere near Eccles-on-Sea. But if he was, Sherlock had a strong suspicion he and Stephen were being held in the isolated rowing clubhouse. The one he'd parked the hire car no more than fifteen feet from, and sat smoking and eating for an hour next to, earlier that evening.

"So you did have friends around," Doherty remarked. "Unless that bitch just happened to be in a foggy cemetery for fun."

_Bitch?_

Sherlock had expected John to be in the churchyard and perhaps Lestrade, but the context of his remark suggested that Doherty was definitely talking about a woman. He had no recollection of her, or of the shots Doherty had fired at her.

"Oh, well." Doherty drew the gun out and held it to Sherlock's temple. He screwed his eyes shut, awaiting the last second of his life and determined, he thought with no amusement, to end with a bang, not a whimper. But the muzzle of the gun stroked his face gently.

"I see her again and it's going to be goodnight, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," Doherty said.

_He knows he's in a very narrow geographical field. And he doesn't expect to make it out of here alive, either._

"And not just for you," Doherty continued. "Did you get much conversation out of your friend over there?"

Sherlock's mouth was also still taped. He gave a brief shake of his head before cold fingers fumbled near his jawline and the tape was ripped off in one searing move. This time he yelped; flicking his tongue to his stinging lips, he tasted blood.

"Where's your brother?" Doherty demanded.

"London."

"Didn't come with you?"

"No." Sherlock tried to slow and regulate his breathing for a few seconds. Drawing in a deep breath hurt too, more dully than his arm, and he wondered vaguely if he had broken ribs. "Doesn't... know where I am..."

_Doesn't know where I am._

Sherlock felt something well up in him, but it wasn't pain this time; it was shame. He'd tried to do this without Mycroft's help. Whatever he'd been trying to prove by that had failed, though. Because even if he got out of this alive, all he'd demonstrated to Mycroft was that he was still stupid, irresponsible little Sherlock, always falling overboard and taking overdoses and botching up every move he'd ever made against James Moriarty and Sebastian Moran.

The damsel in distress.

_And the fact that I'm about to start sobbing like a little girl is really just proving Mycroft's stupid point._

"Not so talkative now, are we?"

"Water," Sherlock croaked, swiping at the warm metallic blood on his torn lips again. "Please."

"May as well get you champagne."

If Sherlock had been less distraught, he may have found himself with enough swagger to suggest it. "Please," he begged again, still feeling as pathetic mentally as he did physically. "Water. Please."

There were a few moments of mental fuzziness as Doherty moved around; Sherlock shut his eyes again, going back to concentrating on slowing his breathing. _I can do that. I have control over that._ Even though the night was freezing, he could feel that his shirt and jacket were soaked in sweat. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea in the world where his coat and scarf had gone.

Without saying a word, Doherty clanked the heavy metal door open and left.

_Does he have a key, or is he just being careless?_

The roar of the sea flowed in through the ajar door, but Sherlock knew there was no chance of escaping that way. He had no idea how far Doherty had gone and why, and knew he couldn't defend himself physically. He had serious doubts as to whether he could even stand. And anyhow...

He again dragged himself closer to Stephen, who was still lying facing the wall. Sherlock had a sudden irrational thought of giving him his jacket, then chastised himself for thinking for one second that taking off his jacket would even be possible just then. "Stephen," he ventured in a low voice. "Can you understand me?"

After a few seconds, Stephen groaned softly.

"Listen, I'm going to get you out of here..." Sherlock continued. "All I want you to do is... keep yourself alive... and do whatever I tell you. All right?"

Another faint groan. Sherlock dragged himself away again, in approximately the same position Doherty had left him. He did not know that Mycroft had already promised Stephen the same thing – _Shackleton expedition._ When Shackleton had left most of his party on deserted, icy Elephant Island to summon a rescue party, he had told them that it was his job to find help, and all they had to do in return was stay alive until that help came.

* * *

"A couple on Beach Road just reported sounds of a struggle." DI June Merivale's no-nonsense voice came through fuzzily on the radio. "About a mile south of where we're stationed. Heard a car fishtail on the road, a couple of doors slamming, and a yell."

"And none of you have pulled over a vehicle?"

"Haven't even seen one, Lestrade."

Lestrade was prowling up and down the church embankment, desperate to be on the move again but fully aware that there was no better place to move onto just then, even though the worst of the fog had started to lift. MacDonald had called up a DC from Bradstreet's roadblock and they'd taken Brian Merchant away to the nearest local station, which was ten miles away. The man was either an amazing actor or Paul Doherty really did keep his cards close – Merchant hadn't wavered from his story. For the first day and a half, Stephen had been kept in a house near Lessingham. After Paul had killed Gary, he'd removed him somewhere else and hadn't told Brian where.

"Right," Lestrade said into the radio. "I want officers at the scene where the car fishtailed. See if you can find any evidence Dolan left the road and if so, if he was dragging something. I'm calling in forensics, so don't go trampling over anything. Like I said to you, this guy is armed and he shot twice at Donovan. He's dangerous. Don't take any risks with him." Lestrade looked up at John, who was watching his every move and who suddenly swallowed violently. "I've sent Donovan off to get her ear looked at and I'm sending Halloran down to you," he said into the radio. "And John Watson. Get a couple of your guys to meet them."

"What good's that going to do?" John demanded tersely as Lestrade hung up the line. "Do I look like a forensic tech to you?"

"Got any better ideas?"

As he miserably got into the squad car that would transport him only a few miles, John miserably had to reflect that he didn't.

* * *

Sherlock was jolted back into consciousness and struggled to sit up, gasping and choking. Doherty was back, and he had just thrown a bucket of briny, freezing sea water on his face.

"There's your water," he said with vim. "You never said you wanted to drink it."

Doherty didn't know it, but the frigid water triggered something in Sherlock; some innate, primal instinct went into hyperdrive. He coughed and spluttered, feeling the burn from where some of it had been sucked into his lungs. _If I pass out again, he's probably going to kill me. Even if he does it accidentally._

_God, my arm!_

"Can you read?"

At this, Sherlock managed to flick aside the pain. He looked up at his captor, grey eyes cold with contempt. "Of course I can read," was all he said.

"Great. Guess who we're calling?"

Sherlock's stomach flipped. He hoped that Lestrade was still in London to deal with this. Or better yet, Mrs. Hudson. So far as he understood it – and he had never known his brother well – there was nobody else in Mycroft's life who would be able and willing to be there with him for this one.

"Then I need you to cut the tape on my wrists," he got out. _And show me if you have an object that will cut it._

"Ha! How dumb do you think I am, Sherlock?"

"I need to hold the phone," he insisted. "My... my arm's broken... and my ankles are bound. I can't escape. Let me hold the phone..."

"I can hold it to your ear, like I did him." Doherty gestured over to Stephen, whose only sound was his breathing. Sherlock wondered if he was conscious.

Waiting for further instructions, Sherlock suddenly remembered a row he and John had had in earlier years, about six months after they'd become flatmates.

They'd been watching a random episode of some dark TV crime drama involving a main cast member, a forensic tech who had been taken hostage. He'd begun by annoying John no end with criticising the bare factual details of the show: "She's a forensic technician, John. Even the field techs don't seek out perpetrators like that. If Anderson got himself kidnapped while wandering around a dark warehouse on his own trying to do Sally Donovan's job, it would serve him right."

John had tolerated this, in his usual exasperated way, but then Sherlock had completely enraged him.

"No, _no!_ Don't tell him that!" he'd roared at the television. " _Moron!_ He's only kidnapped you because he _wants_ you to tell him where your boyfriend lives. Once he has that information you're of no value to him alive and he has every motive in the world to kill you. Honestly, John, most crime victims die of _stupidity!"_

"For God's sake, Sherlock!" John had shot back. "It isn't stupidity, it's fear!"

"Fear _is_ stupidity."

John had got out of his seat so purposefully that for a second Sherlock wondered if he was going to hit him.

"No, it isn't," he'd spat at him. "Fear is triggered by sensory data being sent to the thalamus and then on to the amygdala, which then sends a fight-or-flight response to the hypothalamus, which, among other things, causes the pituitary gland to flood your body with over _thirty bloody hormones_ , resulting in various physiological responses such as elevated blood pressure and interruption in heart rate and breathing patterns. Which all leads back to one place: compromised cognitive function that a person can't control by being _clever_. Now are you going to shut up, watch this, and have a bit of _empathy_ for once in your life?"

Of course, Sherlock had snippily conceded John's insultingly patient-level _science_ had been correct. But it had only been months later, when he'd found himself staring down a giant dog he believed to be a threat to his life, that he finally understood fear. John had been right. Being smarter than others didn't make you any stronger.

But this empathy thing... that might help him survive.

* * *

 

Sherlock waited while Doherty, upturned torch beside him, was awkwardly scribbling something on his knee. He turned onto his good shoulder, trying to watch him without being kicked at for staring.

_Right handed. Unimportant. Sticks his tongue out to one side while writing. Unimportant. Using a torch... confirms my suspicions we're in the clubhouse. No electricity. Winter._

_No electricity._

Sherlock glanced over at Stephen in the corner. Only an occasional thin whistling sound when he breathed indicated the man was still alive.

"Right." Doherty finally stood up, went over to him, and dropped the paper he held. It drifted down onto Sherlock's cheek and he tried to wriggle out from underneath it.

"Oh, sorry." Doherty smirked as he picked it up. "I forgot you're a bit under the weather. It's nearly half-nine. I hope Mycroft doesn't go to bed early."

He fumbled for a long time before finally setting the phone down near Sherlock's left elbow. Propping himself up on it, Sherlock glanced over the grubby, ill-spelled scrap of paper and took as deep a breath as he could manage, listening to the line purring for a couple of seconds. It was turned to its loudest, he realised... but not on speakerphone. Because Paul Doherty had no idea how to do much else with a phone than make a standard, ordinary call. It was a wonder he'd been able to block the outgoing number. Maybe Gary had been a bit more technologically adept.

"Hello?"

Mycroft's voice was still thick with sleep and sedatives; the call had woken him up after a marathon ten hours of it. Sherlock swallowed down something.

"Your brother came too close to me, Mycroft," he read out, ignoring the atrocious spelling and grammar and trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. "So I had to invite him over..."

There was a horrible silence on the line that hung there for nearly half a minute.

"Tell me what you want, Doherty." Mycroft spoke sharply, and Sherlock flinched, suddenly worried that Mycroft, brilliant _Mycroft_ , was going to immediately show his hand.

And then flinched again when he realised he'd assumed that Mycroft had a hand to show.

"Tell me what you want," Mycroft demanded again.

Sherlock shut his eyes for a few moments while Doherty wrote. The ill-spelled sentence finally shoved at him came as absolutely no surprise.

"I want you to know that I'm going to kill Sherlock," he read out dully.

* * *

John liked to see himself as at least _moderately_ observant. But he could never see things like Sherlock could, and he certainly couldn't do it under pressure and stress. By the time he and DC Chris Halloran – a thin, fragile-looking kid of twenty-seven who, after Jacob Dyer, was the second youngest member of Lestrade's team - arrived to tape off the road and examine the area around, all he could make out under the glare of the car headlights was a vague set of tyre skid marks on the asphalt and some flattening of the grass nearby. He grabbed a torch from the back seat of the police car and shone it inside the parameters of the tape, knowing he'd catch hell from forensics if he went anywhere near the evidence.

_But we don't have time to run all this through a lab!_

There were smears of blood on the torn, trodden grass.

John suddenly felt sick. One shot had definitely been fired at Sally Donovan, and she was absolutely sure the second had been aimed at her, too. But she was in shock and couldn't possibly swear to it.

"Christ," Halloran muttered helpfully, running his hand through his hair and making his way over to a PC in uniform. John watched him go, but wasn't interested in what they were discussing. He was still looking at the grass, and could now see a few smears of blood on the road itself.

"John Watson, is it?"

A short, blonde woman of about forty had just seemingly appeared at John's left elbow, and he blinked and startled. Even on a good day, he hated people sneaking up on him. The woman seemed not to notice his reaction and held out a hand.

"DS Lucy Parnell," she said calmly, with enough sympathy in her voice that John realised he didn't strictly need to confirm who she was speaking to. _Lucy Parnell..._ he knew both her name and her face, but couldn't place her as one DS Parnell who had done most of the official procedurals with him the day he believed Sherlock had committed suicide. After hearing the news, Lestrade had been forced to call her in and withdraw from the case, citing personal reasons. She'd been very kind to John, considering the charges he'd been facing at the time.

"Uh, yes," he muttered.

"We're going to find Sherlock, John."

"Are you?"

"Yes. There's only so many places Doherty could take him, and we have a full description of his vehicle. I can't give you a time frame, but I don't think it will be long. We've got people out looking."

That part was certainly true, John reflected. There were so many senior officers about that he wondered if there were any left in London. "Are you going to find him alive?" was his next tense question.

"You know I can't promise that," Parnell said. "But I think we will, John. We have every reason to believe Stephen Hassell is still alive. If Doherty is taking the same approach to using Sherlock to get at Mycroft, he won't kill him."

 _Not yet, anyway._ John was still staring at the blood splashed on the grass. Under the lights, it looked almost magenta. "He tried to get out of the car..."

"And we think he was put back into it."

"After he bled all over the grass." John gestured vaguely, then cupped his hand over his mouth for a second. _Not a lot of blood. Don't get ahead of yourself. You can't help if you lose it._

"It's not as much as it looks." Parnell echoed his own thoughts. "It could be from something as minor as a nosebleed."

"Nothing else has been found?" John tried, almost desperately. "You didn't find his phone, his wallet? Nothing that fell out of his pockets in a struggle?"

"Nothing yet," Parnell said matter-of-factly over the sound of her phone as it began to ring. She pulled it off the clip on her belt and looked at the incoming number for a second. "Excuse me, sorry."

She lifted her phone to her ear and began to walk away a few paces. John watched her go, staring blankly at first; then his gaze focused on the phone at her ear.

And something ignited.

One of the very first things John had ever noticed about Sherlock was the intensity of his thinking. The solution to a case, or even a sizeable breakthrough, sometimes seemed to hit him head-on like an orgasm; John had more than once reflected to himself that this was genuinely how Sherlock 'got off.' It was evident in the sudden wide-eyed gasp of _oh_ he usually gave when the pieces clicked together; the way he tensed up for a few seconds when the realisation hit and then, if he was standing, often went so slack that he needed to lean on something or sit down.

Apparently, such a transcendental experience didn't happen to boring, ordinary people and their boring, ordinary minds. Certainly it had never before happened to John. But for the first time in his life, the possibility that abruptly opened up hit John like a brickbat. He literally reeled with it, and if he could have realistically sat down just then, he would have. The lights around him darkened for a second, and he didn't even notice Halloran return to his side.

"Dr. Watson?" Halloran appealed meekly. "Are you okay?"

John ignored the question. "Does someone here have a laptop?" he demanded.

Halloran was looking at him as if he wasn't quite sure if he should regard him as a genius or an idiot. "There's a netbook in the back of the car," he volunteered warily. "But I doubt we have coverage; not out here in the middle of nowhere. Why?"

_Dear God, I know I haven't talked to you since I was shot that first time but if you could kindly make WiFi coverage appear out here, I will get Charlie baptised and I will make Harry be godmother._

"Because," he said, "If we haven't found Sherlock's phone there's a chance Doherty might have confiscated it."

"And destroyed it," Halloran reminded him. "Or turned it off, at least."

"Maybe not. He's a man in his forties who went to prison in 2002, and he's only been out a month. They didn't have smartphones in 2002. What are the odds he doesn't even _know_ that they have a built-in GPS?"


	17. A Good Man

"Paul Doherty, this has gone on _quite far enough_ ," Mycroft was saying down the line, in tones that mimicked a schoolmaster punishing an errant boy. "I'm not playing this game with you anymore. Tell me where you are."

"No!" Sherlock snapped down the line. "Mycroft, have you lost your mind? If you – "

"Shut the _fuck_ up!"

An explosion of pain shattered the small of Sherlock's back as Doherty kicked him. It surged up through his body until he heaved most of what he'd eaten earlier; sour chunks of vomit seared his nostrils. Faintly, he heard Mycroft say his name before the phone near his ear was picked up and Doherty kicked him again. As the boot connected, there was an audible snap; he gasped and twitched his toes, the nausea starting to settle as he realised he wasn't paralysed.

"Paul - "

The next kick caught him just under the ribs; for a few seconds it knocked the breath out of him, then his body lurched as he heaved again.

"Paul," he gasped out again. "Paul... you're a wonderful father..."

Doherty stopped dead and put, _placed_ his foot on the concrete beside Sherlock; an odd, almost dainty gesture. "What?" he demanded blankly, and Sherlock took a shuddering breath.

He knew, and knew well, that he was always saying things that were wrong, that were not good _at all._ He even did it on the rare occasions that he was actually trying to be helpful. There was every likelihood he was going to get this one wrong, too. And then he was going to get a lot more than a disappointed lecture from John.

"Eliza," he said hoarsely, spitting strings of saliva and vomit onto the concrete. "Your daughter... I went to see her... and sh-she told me you were a wonderful father..."

There was a pause of another few seconds, enough for Sherlock to be able to regroup and get some of his breath back.

"You went to see her," Doherty echoed flatly. "How in the bloody hell did you..."

"I saw her at her flat... she lives in Bethnal Green... you... three grandchildren..."

"Oh, come on, now you're just bullshitting me!"

Sherlock concentrated on his breathing for a few seconds. _Grandchildren_. He had Doherty's attention, but perhaps wouldn't have it for long. "Bella, Harry and Jaxon," he went on. "Four, two, eight months. Their... their father wasn't good to her. But she said _you_ were. Tomboy, only child. Fishing on the Wensum... she... always made you throw the fish back alive..."

"What-"

"Lizard kite," he continued, gathering up every scrap of what Eliza Cunningham had told him about her father that he had access to just then. "She had a lizard kite... it was blue... my phone." Sherlock winced and braced up for another kick that never came. "Do you have it?"

"What business is that of yours?"

"Go get it... put something on there for you."

As Sherlock had suspected, his phone was in Doherty's pocket... and it was on. He had no idea what to do with it.

"Press the button below. Swipe with your thumb. Left to right," Sherlock got out.

Awkward and wary, Doherty did it.

"White box... voice memos. Press... her name is on the file. Press it."

There was a long, fumbling silence before Doherty did so, and Eliza's tinny, slightly nasal tones drifted down to him on the floor.

_"...Totally sure I was going to drown, you know. It was only 'cause Dad had been watching and knew I didn't know how to swim out of a rip. He wasn't a good swimmer either, you know, but he didn't flail his arms around like an idiot and wait for someone else to get me; that was never the sort of thing he'd do. Charged straight into the surf. I thought he was a hero after that. I think Mum did, too..."_

Later, Sherlock was as surprised as anyone when he was told what had apparently happened next.

He felt the sweat trickle down his temples and neck as he jerked his feet up and whipped them through the circle of his bound hands; his arm clunked again and the broken bone veered, pulling the skin taut on the right hand side. He did not feel the pain; John's lecture about the neurological causes of fear had left off the detail of adrenaline serving as temporary pain relief. It was all over in a second or two; by the time Doherty glanced up it was just in time for Sherlock to scrabble to his knees and drive his left elbow hard into the man's groin.

The man grunted and swayed backwards, fighting balance precariously for a moment; he floundered blindly with his arm like a falling climber or a drowning diver. Then he made another mistake; doubling over and giving Sherlock a second opportunity. This time Sherlock bludgeoned his elbow into the soft spot of his temple. Another grunt of pain. Doherty finally dropped the phone he held, and then the man toppled.

There was a sickening crack, like that of a dropped hard-boiled egg, as his head hit the floor.

Sherlock reached down and tugged at his shoelaces with his good hand until he had drawn out enough length that it reached his mouth. Holding it taut between his teeth, he held his duct taped wrists to it and pulled them rapidly across in a sawing motion.

Doherty groaned; he hadn't fallen hard and was coming around rapidly. Black dots had started to swim in front of Sherlock's vision as he worked on his wrists, but he knew that if he let himself pass out from the pain of his broken arm being sawed across his shoelace, Doherty would finish this one without delay. He felt an explosion in his arm at every new movement; glancing at it only once, he saw that one bone was now so displaced it had nearly broken his skin. Swallowing, he looked away until there was a sudden snap. But not of a bone. His hands were free.

Doherty made a coughing noise and started to unfurl; Sherlock darted in, whipped his good hand to the man's belt and, drawing out the gun, cracked it across Doherty's temple. The grubby skin split into an abrupt white chasm that flooded with red; Doherty fell still, and Sherlock, in another quick movement with his good hand, found the man's keys in his jeans pocket and drew them out.

This was not a good time to discover that this part of the plan would not work.

Desperation gave Sherlock another, but weaker, burst of strength and he drove the sharpest key into where the duct tape covered the curve of his ankles, ripping it toward himself and then completing the job with his hand.

_Come on... come on!_

The first time he got to his feet, his knees buckled and he involuntarily sank down again. Another frantic attempt; he leaned heavily on the wall for a few seconds before wobbling over to the door and shouldering it open. Cold night air cascaded in. Behind him, there was another groan; but this wasn't Doherty.

"I'm not leaving without you," Sherlock muttered; whether it was the sudden chance of freedom or some other stimuli, the man was conscious and Sherlock could sense him watching him in the darkness. "I just... I need to check..."

Stephen tried to protest again, but Sherlock ignored him, limping out and looking around in the darkness, where patches of fog had started to lift in places. Yes. He was exactly where he'd expected to be, though there was no time to exult in his correct deduction. Because if Doherty's van wasn't parked nearby, he had no idea what the hell he was going to do next.

There were no lights here; none from the road and none from the security light looming alien-like over the carpark. Glancing up at it, Sherlock could barely make it out against the paler black of the sky behind it. _Broken. Of course, it would be broken..._

Even given the dark, he could see that the front carpark was empty, but he didn't stop to wonder what had happened to the hire car he'd parked there earlier. Clutching with his good hand at the wooden boarded external walls of the clubhouse, he started to make his way around the back, toward the ocean. Sand and salt whipped at his eyes and he shut them, shuffling along gingerly along the uneven, shifting ground _(Come on, come on!)_ until his hand finally met empty space; he forced his eyes open and, after a few anxious seconds, made out the dark, silent shape of the van parked diagonally behind.

Relief made him buoyant; it took him less than half the time to make it back into the clubhouse than it had to reach the van. He staggered back over to Stephen. "Stephen, listen carefully. I'm going to carry you," he muttered to him. _How I'm going to carry you, I don't know. Those are just details._ "There's no time to untie you. You're going to have to trust me."

On the floor behind Sherlock, Doherty started to stir.

* * *

Detective Inspector James Bradstreet pulled his gloved hands out of his coat pockets and reached out to take a cup of hot thermos coffee from DS Evan Lundgren. He was usually second-in-command of the Islington command unit, and was another of the senior officers who had been in the office when Lestrade had called in for help. Nice bloke, Greg Lestrade. Laidback, so long as you weren't actively pissing him off, and always willing to pitch in a favour or two when you needed one. When Lestrade called _in_ a favour, you listened, because he needed it and because you probably owed him one or sixteen.

And now they were out in the cold and the fog, looking for Sherlock Holmes.

Bradstreet knew Sherlock by sight, though he had not directly worked with him, and had therefore been outside of the shitstorm that had erupted at the Yard when the man had apparently kidnapped and poisoned two kiddies, then made off under Lestrade's custody and stepped off a roof a few hours later. But he remembered what that time had done for Lestrade. Remembered the day that internal investigative officers had come to Lestrade's office – there hadn't even been a funeral yet – and ordered Lestrade to stand in one corner while they confiscated his files, his computer, his mobile phone. They'd stood him down for eight weeks pending an investigation as to whether he was just as bad as Holmes; whether he had helped him in some way. Clean as a whistle in the end, and that hadn't surprised Bradstreet at all. Lestrade was on the level. Every senior officer in the Met knew that. Bradstreet and Hopkins had done what they could for him when he'd returned to work after those eight weeks, quieter, thinner and older.

It hadn't been much, but they'd tried.

Lestrade hadn't even seemed triumphant about it when, two and a half years later, Holmes turned up right as rain and Dawson had had to publicly concede that Holmes was just as innocent in the matter of the Bruhl kidnapping as Lestrade was. _Jimmy, if someone you considered a friend..._

That had been all he'd said. All he'd needed to. _Considered a friend._

And now the poor bastard was out here going spare because some lunatic had now kidnapped Sherlock Holmes. Maybe even killed him for real this time. Lestrade may have been a great officer, but he was one of those people Lady Luck liked to piss all over, apparently.

Bradstreet wiggled his cold toes inside his boots and sipped his bitter coffee. He was about to radio in again that nothing had turned up at the roadblock; not a thing, not for an hour. And then he saw it.

From the first second, Bradstreet felt danger, though he didn't immediately know why; it was only a set of high-beamed headlights shining dully through the fog in the distance. Finally, a vehicle to stop. Then he realised that it was a vehicle being driven at speed. A vehicle that the driver was having trouble keeping on the road, and which may well plough straight into the squad car blocking the road and kill every officer within twenty feet if it didn't –

"Get back, now!" he shouted, lunging into the open window of the squad car and giving the horn a few warning blasts. The vehicle ahead – hard to say what it was behind the headlights, but probably a van – was still reeling all over the road, but quickly losing speed. Bradstreet ushered his officers well off the road, just in case; but the driver braked hard while he was still almost thirty feet away and the van lurched to a stop.

The engine coughed and spluttered into the night and was silent, as if it had choked to death.

Bradstreet rushed over to the driver's side and threw the door open; the semi-conscious driver slid out of the seat. Bradstreet could barely make him out in the darkness, but could smell it on him – sweat, urine, blood.

"Peters!" He barked over his shoulder. "Get Lestrade up here, and call a fucking ambulance, now!" He whipped his coat off and wrapped it around Sherlock, lowering him gently out of the seat and onto the road beside, his back up against one of the tyres. "Okay, mate," he muttered distractedly. "You're okay."

He shuddered and tried not to look at the jagged chunk of pale bone jutting out sideways from Sherlock's right forearm.

" _Stephen,_ " Sherlock was trying to say through grey lips.

It was only then that Bradstreet realised there was another person in the vehicle. Lundgren and Griffiths had just slid the back door open and were carefully conveying another man out; naked, bound at the wrists, ankles and mouth. Lundgren, who had approximately the same contours and stability as a Kelvinator refrigerator, had lifted him in his arms while Griffiths rushed to open the squad car door ahead of him. Bradstreet watched as the two officers put both their coats on him, and Griffiths put his fingers to the man's neck and then tilted his chin up gently.

"Alive?" Bradstreet asked him bluntly.

"Got a pulse, sir."

"Keep him that way." He glanced at Peters, who was mid-conversation on the radio, then turned back to Sherlock reassuringly. "We've got him, and he's all right. Just hold still, all right, you're in a hell of a mess. Got an ambulance coming."

Sherlock tilted his head back against the van and nodded, then finally allowed himself to pass out.


	18. Flashes

The world passed by in brief flashes.

* * *

 

John's voice was the first to pierce the fog and cold. He sounded somewhere very far away: _let me come through. I'm a doctor._

* * *

 

The comforting touch of stiff wool and the smell of Arctic Ice antiperspirant and Persil laundry soap; slight undertones of cigarettes. Lestrade's coat.

_"I know he's cold, but careful of his arm. Infection..."_

He forced his eyes open for a second, but all that could be seen was a sky full of stars through the glare of nearby blue and red flashes. "John," he slurred, trying to sit up.

"No," John snapped in response; he felt warm palms against his ribs. "No, Sherlock. I need you to stay really still for me, okay...?"

"Is Stephen..."

"He's fine. Honestly. He'll be fine. You got him out, and you did a great job. Bradstreet's guys have got him in the squad car and they're warming him up now – Sherlock, your arm's broken –"

"I _know'ts_ broken!"

"Yeah, I don't think you've noticed yet that it's _really_ broken. Just hold still. Where else does it hurt?"

" _Everywhere_." Sherlock took a shallow breath.

"Can you move your toes?"

"Yes." This time Sherlock was scathing. "I... Mycroft..."

There was a pause; or at least Sherlock registered it as one. And then he heard Lestrade from somewhere nearby: _Call his brother. Right now._

* * *

 

A jolt. Wrapped in shiny paper, like a Christmas present. The ambulance door rumbled shut behind.

* * *

 

Mycroft's voice, muffled from behind a closed door; a voice that seemed to hold no words, but deep anger. Sherlock tilted his head slightly toward it. It didn't take much to guess what those words might be: _Sherlock, you always ruin everything. We can't even have a holiday without you doing something to ruin it. Why can't you ever just stop talking? You're always talking and you never think –_

_Can't you ever just stop talking?_

_Why do you have to spoil-?_

* * *

 

A gentle, repetitive _whoosh_ from somewhere close by, like the sound of the tide heard through a conch shell. Warm fingers, slightly roughened by wear and tear, sweeping gently upwards off his forehead. Persil detergent. Arctic Ice deodorant. Cigarettes.

* * *

 

Whatever was making that shrill noise near his right ear, it was _intolerably_ annoying _._

Sherlock stirred slightly. The next thing he registered was his right arm, immobilised beside him in a sort of wire cage and splint and rapidly blooming into intense pain. He took a breath; something itched at his nostrils.

It was a few blurred seconds before he could focus on where he was. Hospital room. Of course. Darkened, though there was an orange flood of light from the corridor that didn't quite reach the bed. In it, he could see the shining floors and pale salmon-coloured walls around him; plastic curtains and furnishings. A few feet away from his left hand, John was sitting in a plastic chair. One leg was crossed awkwardly over the other and he was staring at a random spot near the doorway, as if lost in thought.

"John," he muttered. It slid out without the vowel. _Jn_.

John snapped to attention, getting up and going over to him. "Sherlock, hey..."

"Not enough morphine, John!" _Nt nuff mpheen jn._ Sherlock's left hand scrabbled blindly for a morphine pump he felt should have been within his grasp.

"No, well, you didn't really need much when you were unconscious," John remarked. "Take it easy; try not to move so much, Sherlock. You've just had surgery on your arm, and you're in a back brace for a reason." Then he turned to someone else. "Get his brother. Room 113, last I saw him. Sherlock, do you remember what happened?"

_Why is he asking me a STUPID question like that when I'm in PAIN?!_

"Morphine – "

"Not yet," John was saying calmly. "We can't just shoot you full of drugs at random. You need to be evaluated... you're in a bit of a mess and you've quite a lot of things broken."

"All m're reason..."

Sherlock trailed off, turning his head slightly toward the sound of swift footsteps in the corridor outside. Mycroft appeared half a second later, stopping so abruptly in the doorway that he swayed a little with the inertia. And then, for the first time, Sherlock saw his brother _rushing_.

"Leave us, John," he muttered distractedly over his shoulder as he drew up a chair beside Sherlock's bed. John, who was now standing arms-folded at the foot of the bed, blinked.

"Are you sure you...?"

Mycroft half turned to him, snarling. "I said _out!"_

John hesitated for a second longer, then headed for the door, pushing it open with both hands. Sherlock shut his eyes again, listening to it wobble back into place.

"Did Stephen die?" he mumbled.

"No." Mycroft exhaled. "He's quite alive and very likely to remain so, and just three doors down. He's being treated for hypothermia, dehydration and moderate shock which, I may add, is not much compared to the compound fracture of your right forearm, dislocated right thumb, concussion, cracked sternum, bruised kidneys and two fractured vertebrae that _you_ managed to incur in just an hour and a half, you _unutterably stupid child!"_

Mycroft flinched as if someone had struck him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I've been very concerned. Forgive me."

 _Forgive me_ tumbled out like a demand, not a plea. Sherlock shut his eyes again. Until he was absolutely certain he was dying, Mycroft was _never_ going to crowbar an _I forgive you_ out of him. "You're excused," he mumbled vaguely, by way of compromise. "'N that's really ' _nnoying_ , Mycroft."

Mycroft's fingers smoothed Sherlock's damp curls off his forehead; Sherlock reflected fuzzily that this was probably why Mycroft had snarled at John to get out. The idiot was getting sentimental.

"I've put hard work and dedication into annoying you, Sherlock. How are you feeling? Aside from annoyed."

"Morphine. _Now."_

"Not yet. Now that you're conscious there are more tests they need to do..."

Sherlock frowned. That was the odd thing – he'd already heard that one twice. _Conscious_. "Day?"

"Monday, the thirtieth of December." Mycroft glanced at his watch. "6:42am."

"Lost a day."

"Yes. You've been in and out since they admitted you, the night before last."

"Where...?"

"North Walsam, of all ungodly places." Mycroft looked disdainful for a moment. "You've been unstable. It was thought better for you to be treated at the nearest hospital until you regained full consciousness and began to improve than to transport you to London immediately."

"What happen' to Doherty?"

"You didn't kill him, Sherlock," Mycroft said with sudden insight. "He's in the hospital in Cromer, under police guard."

Mycroft did not provide the details until days later: after a short search, Paul Doherty had been found curled up bleeding in the sandhills just north of the rowing clubhouse. The decision to take him to a different hospital had been primarily because his safety at Walsam was considered compromised, even with a police presence at his bedside.

Mycroft also did not mention another body police had now found, half-buried under a cairn of stones on farmland half a mile east of St John's Churchyard.

"I told you," Sherlock mumbled. "Told you I was going to bring him back to you."

Mycroft shifted uncomfortably. "You do not need to put yourself in danger to win my approval," he said. "And I hope you'll forgive me for leading you to believe otherwise. Sherlock Holmes, I'm only going to ever say this once, so listen carefully. I care more about you than I'll _ever_ care about Stephen Hassell. Or about anyone else."

* * *

"Get anything useful?"

Sally Donovan had been sent in to take Stephen Hassell's victim testimony against Paul Doherty; Lestrade was waiting for her in the little courtyard outside the main hospital entrance, which seemed the only place they could talk about a sensitive case without being overheard. Donovan shook her head.

"Nothing we didn't already know," she said in disappointed tones. She had some of the paperwork in a folder in her hands, and hugged it to her chest protectively. "Seems he was pretty out of it for most of the time. Can't even explain how he got rescued."

"Neither can Sherlock. Apparently, he turned into Macgyver for a bit there." Lestrade glanced at the single stitch in Donovan's right ear. _She really should be off on leave,_ he reflected guiltily; leave had certainly been offered, but Donovan had rejected it, and while she was exhibiting no signs of emotional or psychiatric distress there was no fair way to stand her down. _Wish she'd take up the shrink, even if she only goes once. Not every officer gets shot at like that._ He scrubbed his hand over his haggard face and was silent for a few seconds, then cleared his throat.

"Okay. I'm just going to get this out of the way right now. Are you going to report me?"

"Report you for... oh. I... don't know," she said, suddenly a little flustered. "Actually wasn't even thinking about that."

"Maybe you should," Lestrade said smilelessly. "I mean, MacDonald and Halloran were both there when it happened, too. If they report it before you do, it could put you in an awkward position."

"Do you think they will?"

"No."

"Then I don't think I will either. Anyhow, if I report it, it'll put _them_ in an awkward position."

Lestrade watched the ebb and flow of the hospital front entrance for a while. A young man herding four kids into the front entrance of the hospital. An older one hobbling out on crutches. A woman about Mel's age who was wheeling an IV tower beside her and who was so thin her hospital gown and robe looked almost obscene. "I'm not proud of myself, Donovan," he muttered.

"If I thought you were, I'd have told on you well before now, sir."

 _This isn't harbouring a culture of police brutality,_ she told herself. _It's giving a break to a man who's made mistakes. He's a good officer. If he's stood down, innocent people might die._

* * *

It was past midday when Sherlock was considered lucid and strong enough to be able to discuss the details of his prognosis.

"Twelve weeks," John told him inexorably.

_"What?"_

"You heard me. You're due for more surgery on your arm once we can rule out a primary infection, and then it'll be a cast for twelve weeks and a spinal brace for at least six."

"Twelve weeks f'r broken arm. _Ludicrous_."

John decided not to tell Sherlock how relieved he was that the man could now spit out two-pound words on cue. "It wasn't a simple break, Sherlock," he explained. "You should see the x-rays. They're horrible. The added risk of nerve damage and... well. You'll never know how relieved I was that you could even move your fingers at the end of all that." He smiled slightly. "Cheer up. Once you've had all that hardware installed, I'll give you all the passwords and perks to the secret society of cyborgs."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and John smiled properly this time. He may have been almost entirely immobilised just then and barely able to talk, but when Sherlock was able to huff and roll his eyes, he was on the mend.

"Anyway," he continued. "Do you know what this means?"

" 'm moving back in with Mycroft?"

John shrugged, once again reminding himself of his and Molly's main project for the upcoming year: moving to a larger house with at least another bedroom, in preparation for their family planning project the year after. "Perhaps," he conceded. "Though this is a bit different to the time you had your appendix out. I wasn't really thinking of that, anyway. With your right arm completely out of action, Sherlock, this is the _perfect_ opportunity for you to train yourself to be cross-dominant."

Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again when he realised what a magnificent idea this actually was.

_Cross-dominance!_

He had always been jealous of John's abilities in that respect, and had never been _quite_ satisfied with the knowledge that it wasn't a superpower on John's part – it was the result of six years of being punished at primary school for writing with his left hand, and a father who'd refused to let his son play cricket and tennis left-handed.

_Cross-dominance. Brilliant._

"Anyway, stop worrying about being bored and start thinking of your health for a change." John gingerly pulled up Sherlock's blanket a little. "You need to rest, not talk."

" _Been_ resting."

"Then rest some more. Quickest way to healing, Sherlock."

* * *

Once Sherlock had drifted back into sleep, John reluctantly rose and went back into the waiting room. Mycroft had been wandering back and forth between Stephen and Sherlock's hospital rooms for the past thirty-two hours, but now he was sitting in a chair in the waiting room, his hands lying meekly in his lap. John crossed the room and sat down beside him.

"Complaining about being in a cast, of all bloody things to prioritise," he said, without looking at the man beside him. "Not showing any signs of post-traumatic stress, but he's still fuzzy, so it's hard to tell at the moment. They won't let him leave the hospital without a mental health care plan in place, anyway. I can promise you that. He'll be fine."

"Yes," Mycroft agreed. Then he swiftly pressed both fingertips into the inner corners of his eyes and took a deep breath. Then another.

"Go for it. I won't tell anyone," John reassured him in a low voice. His gaze had wandered down the corridor toward Stephen's room while Mycroft took a few more deep breaths. _Give the man a bit of privacy._

The shame radiating off him was almost tangible.

"This is very embarrassing..."

"Nobody else has even noticed, and I don't care, Mycroft."

To walk away would be to draw attention to it; instead John waited patiently, looking around at anything that wasn't the man beside him. There was no doubt about it – hospitals were interesting places. So interesting that once or twice in the last day he'd been tempted to pitch into the workload. He hadn't been as stark raving bored at home with Charlie as he'd expected to be, but changing nappies didn't produce quite the same level of adrenaline as making split-second decisions that saved lives – and sometimes didn't.

_Really should call Molly once it's a civilised hour._

_Maybe bring some flowers home for her tonight._

_And let Charlie play with that bloody singing polar bear for a bit._

"How's Stephen doing this afternoon?" he finally ventured to ask aloud. Mycroft swiped his thumbs over the corners of both eyes in turn and stopped slouching.

"Conscious; able to converse on a rudimentary level," he said in matter-of-fact tones. "His doctor doesn't suppose he's sustained any permanent damage. Aside from his ears. And... some scarring..."

John flinched. He'd already heard that part of it from Greg. In darkness and fear, even Sherlock had missed what Gary Doherty had neatly carved into Stephen's abdomen: _Property of Mycroft Holmes. xx_

"John, the day I first met you, I remarked that bravery was by far the kindest word for stupidity."

"Yes, I remember."

"I meant that. I still do. I..." Mycroft cut himself short and took another deep breath, but his arms were now folded, hands tucked away resolutely. "You know, it's really quite stupid for you to constantly put yourself in harm's way for Sherlock's sake," he said instead.

"Yeah, well." John shrugged. "That's what friends do, don't they. It just happens that Sherlock gets himself in harm's way more than normal people do."

"You could walk away from all of this at any moment, John. Take your family somewhere safe. Start a new life in peace."

John smiled wryly for a second. "No," was all he said. "No, I really couldn't."

"I can't either," Mycroft said dully. Down the corridor, a nurse started to laugh about something; an abrasive braying that twinged on every strained nerve.

"I think you've got a hard decision to make," John said once the sound had died down. He got up stiffly. "But I don't think you need to make it straight away."


	19. Epilogue

Stephen was standing near the window of his hospital bedroom, the flood of early January sunshine from outside dappling his hair. He was fully dressed; standing vigilant by the doorway, Mycroft reflected that he clearly still needed some help with his shoes, even though his doctor had cleared him to be released that afternoon. He watched as Stephen listlessly folded a pair of silk pyjamas and stacked them neatly in his suitcase.

"Carson just texted me," he offered, a little awkwardly. "He said everything is ready for you, and you won't want for anything."

Stephen, now shifting around in the bedside drawer for any loose items, glanced up but said nothing. Mycroft's gaze was drawn, as it so often was, to the livid scars where his ears should have been. His chest thumped painfully.

"Please, Stephen," he said. "You know why this has to happen. We discussed it."

"Yes." Stephen looked down again and swallowed heavily.

For a few seconds there was a silence so profound that both men could hear a conversation two nurses were having at the nurses station outside.

"How is your brother?" Stephen asked him stiffly. He knew Sherlock was still hospitalised, although he'd been transferred to London four days before for follow up care. But Mycroft sighed and pushed that issue aside. Whenever he had thought of Sherlock in the past few days, it had been with a frustrated sort of jealousy. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that Sherlock blundered through life with so few responsibilities. It wasn't bloody _fair_ that he had so many people who...

He cleared his throat.

"He's recovering well," he said simply. "Stephen... I need you to understand that I'm sorry about this."

"I know you are," Stephen muttered into his chest. "And so am I. But I'm not a kid, Mycroft; I worked for MI6. I think I remember the word 'dangerous' was even on the job description."

"Yes, but we're not talking about your job now, are we? You weren't... hurt... because you were my _employee_." Mycroft looked down briefly at the umbrella he clutched in his right hand. "A man in my position can have employees, Stephen, but he can't have relationships. This way, there will be a chance you might..."

Stephen scoffed. "In Pembrokeshire?" He had only two days before been shown pictures of the quaint property Mycroft's security people had discreetly bought in St. David's, near the Welsh coast; a place Mycroft had begged, scolded and ordered Stephen not to leave for at least twelve months. With his own name carved into him, it would take a long time for even geography and total lack of contact to free Stephen; to convince others that he was nothing to Mycroft, that there was no benefit in using him as leverage.

"I do admit that your pool of potential life partners may be limited there," Mycroft conceded, shifting his weight onto his heels for a second. "But you will also be safer."

"I don't particularly want to be safer."

Stephen was closing the zip on his suitcase; Mycroft's reached out and laid his hand over Stephen's. The younger man looked up at him in silence.

" _I_ particularly want you to be safer," Mycroft said heavily. "This is not due to a lack of sentiment on my part, I can assure you."

Mycroft had already squared this with himself, in the dark hours at the hospital and at home: this was a weak decision fuelled by sentiment. Stephen was infinitely useful to him purely in a professional sense. He'd been easily the best personal assistant he had ever had, as a matter of fact. Pragmatism would insist the man continue as an employee, while denying his sensual needs by cutting him off as a lover. Pragmatism would expect Stephen to put himself directly back into the firing line of any number of budding psychopaths miffed by legal decisions made years ago.

Stephen turned his hand over and brought Mycroft's to his lips for a second. "I know," he muttered, giving it one last squeeze and releasing his fingers. "I know."

Mycroft's phone bleeped from his jacket pocket and he drew it out. "The car's out front," he said distractedly, a new kind of strain in his voice; he snapped his phone shut and pocketed it, taking a deep breath. "Remember that Carson is now in charge of providing you with anything and everything."

"Except you."

"I'm sorry that he can't provide you with that." Mycroft glanced toward the door. "Shall I come out with you?"

Stephen shook his head. "No," he said. "I think it's best if you didn't."

He lifted his suitcase off the bed; as he passed close by him, Mycroft expected... something. Some last words of sentiment. Some plea for him to change his mind. A kiss. A slap. Something.

There was nothing. He watched Stephen walk, purposeful and strong after his ordeal, down to the nurses station and hand in his discharge paperwork as if nothing momentous had happened between them. He did not even glance back at Mycroft as he finally walked toward the lifts, suitcase still in hand.

Mycroft searched distractedly in his pocket for his phone.

_Text me when you greet him. Look after him. – Mycroft Holmes_

Seven anxious minutes later, Ewan Carson's response came: _Hassell received sir. Security update on arrival. – EC_

At Sherlock's hospital bedside in London that evening, Mycroft received his security update text. Stephen had arrived safely in St David's and was under protection.

Mycroft never saw him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it – for now.
> 
> I do have a ton of ideas for the continuation of this series, but I won't be uploading anything until at least after I've seen Series 3. I'm a little concerned my opinion of these characters and what would constitute reasonably in-character behaviour will change so drastically after seeing Series 3 that I might be a bit discouraged...
> 
> It's been fourteen months since After the Fall was published and even though my writing is far from perfect and I've had some severe ups and downs, I've had such fun writing this series. I hope you all have too, and thank you again with a sincere heart for every hit, follow, fave, review and PM. 
> 
> With less than 24 hours before the BBC screens The Empty Hearse, I hope Season 3 is even better than we all expected and gives you tons of fanfic fodder.
> 
> Lots and lots of love,
> 
> Edhla xx


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